Michelle Lewis, Senior Research Specialist Michelle Lewis, Ph.D. is director of the Biology Core for the Vanderbilt Institute for Chemical Biology HTS Laboratory. Michelle received her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Georgia. During her graduate work, she participated in establishing a natural products extraction and screening facility in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, as a part of the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Agriculture. This mulitdisciplinary effort centered on the ethanobotanical medicines of the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya, and involved researchers at the University of Georgia, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chiapas, Mexico, and Molecular Discovery, Ltd., Wales. She joined Johnson & Johnson Pharmacuetical Research and Development in 2000 where her postdoctoral research focused on antimicrobial drug discovery from small molecule and natural products libraries. In addition to screening "known" druggable targets, Dr. Lewis identified and screened novel antimicrobial gene products to identify new molecular mechanisms to combat multi-drug-resistant clinical isolates. In 2003, she moved to Diversa Corporation to help establish an antimicrobial screening program based on the company's unique and diverse environmental microbe collection. She is currently the Director of the Biology Core for the Vanderbilt Institute for Chemical Biology High-Throughput Screening Laboratory and manager of the Biology for the Vanderbilt Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network.