Kristen Lewis

Kristen is a first-year MD-PhD student who grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended Columbia University for her undergraduate degree. After majoring in Neuroscience, Kristen became interested in the role of the gut microbiome as it relates to the enteric nervous system. In her junior year, Kristen joined the lab of Dr. Anne-Catrin Uhlemann at Columbia University Irving Medical Center to study microbial genetics and the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. After graduating, she joined the lab full time as a research technician for two years before starting medical school. She worked on a variety of projects ranging from the incidence of multidrug resistant organisms in liver and kidney transplant recipients, to the specific mechanism underlying polymyxin resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae. She worked alongside lab members to sequence hundreds of clinical polymyxin resistant K. pneumoniae isolates and perform comparative analysis to identify discrepancies between resistant and susceptible genomes. She became skilled in CRISPR-Cas9 directed gene editing to functionally validate resistance-conferring mutations. As she begins her journey as an MSTP student, Kristen hopes to broaden her exposure to different areas of microbiology and genetics research in clinically meaningful ways.
Outside of the lab, Kristen worked as a figure skating coach and academic tutor with the organization, Figure Skating in Harlem. She also served as a New York Academy of Sciences mentor to middle-school students in Washington Heights, and earned certification as a Volunteer Rape Crisis Counselor with the New York State Department of Health. In her free time, Kristen enjoys staying active and is working towards her goal of running the New York City Marathon next year.