Kim Lewis is a university distinguished professor and Director at the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. He is also a fellow of the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

He has been a permanent member of the Drug Discovery and Drug Resistance National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Section, and Chair of two NIH Study Sections on Drug Discovery. Kim served as a panellist and contributor to reports on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by the National Academies Institute of Medicine, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the European Academies of Science. Kim is a member of Faculty 1000, a worldwide panel of experts evaluating research advancements and is a recipient of the MIT C.E. Reed Faculty Initiative Award as well as the NIH Director’s Transformative Award.

He has authored over 100 papers and is an inventor on several patents. His notable findings include the development of general methods to grow previously uncultured bacteria that make up more than 99% of biodiversity on the planet, the discovery of the culprit of recalcitrant biofilm infections, drug-tolerant persister cells as well as several novel antimicrobials. Kim has also served as a consultant to the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries and is a co-founder of NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, Arietis Pharma, and Holobiome.

Kim obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from Moscow University, Russia in 1980 and has been on the Faculties of MIT, University of Maryland, and Tufts University, all in the USA.