Suzanna (Suzi) E. Lewis was a scientist and

Principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

at the

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

Bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

Open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Project based at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

until her retirement in 2019. Lewis led the development of open standards and software for

genome annotation DNA annotation or genome annotation is the process of identifying the locations of genes and all of the coding regions in a genome and determining what those genes do. An annotation (irrespective of the context) is a note added by way of explanati ...

and

ontologies In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains ...

Education

Lewis has

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degrees in

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

and

Computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Research

She led the team responsible for the systematic annotation of the ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with Ch ...

'' genome, which included development of the Gadfly annotation pipeline and database framework, and the annotation curation tool Apollo. Lewis' work in genome annotation also includes playing instrumental roles in the GASP community assessment exercises to evaluate the state of the art in genome annotation, development of the Gbrowse

genome browser In bioinformatics, a genome browser is a graphical interface for display of information from a biological database Biological databases are libraries of biological sciences, collected from scientific experiments, published literature, high-throughp ...

, and the data coordination center for the

modENCODE The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a public research project which aims to identify functional elements in the human genome. ENCODE also supports further biomedical research by "generating community resources of genomics data, software, ...

project. In addition to her work in genome annotation, Lewis has been a leader in the development of

Open Biomedical Ontologies The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry is a group of people dedicated to build and maintain ontologies related to the life sciences. The OBO Foundry establishes a set of principles for ontology development for creating a s ...

(OBO), National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), contributing to the

Gene Ontology The Gene Ontology (GO) is a major bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species. More specifically, the project aims to: 1) maintain and develop its controlled vocabulary of gene and g ...

Sequence Ontology The Sequence Ontology (SO) is an ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped int ...

, Uberon anatomy ontologies, and developing open software for editing and navigating ontologies such as AmiGO, OBO-Edit and Phenote.

Awards and honors

In 2005 Lewis was elected a

fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS) is an honor accorded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to distinguished persons who are members of the Association. Fellows are elected ...

in recognition of her contributions to science in the fields of Information, Computing, and Communication.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Suzanne Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science American bioinformaticians Ontology (information science) University of California, Berkeley people Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area Living people American women scientists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women