Jacob Lewis

Dr Jacob Lewis is a biochemist based at Molecular Horizons, UOW’s premier life sciences research institute. An NHMRC Investigator and ARC DECRA Fellow, Dr Lewis leads a research group unravelling the structural dynamics of genome replication to deliver fresh insights into how failures in these processes drive disease, drawing on his expertise in biochemistry, cryo-electron (cryo-EM) microscopy, single-molecule imaging, and biochemical reconstitution. Dr Lewis completed his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Wollongong (2017) then undertook postdoctoral training with world-leading biophysicist and ARC Laureate Fellow, Prof. Antoine van Oijen. In the van Oijen lab Dr Lewis developed pioneering single-molecule assays to visualise eukaryotic DNA replication in real time using purified proteins, challenging textbook models. In 2019, supported by competitive European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowships, Dr Lewis left Australia to join Europe's largest biomedical discovery institute, the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK). During his four-year tenure, he developed new cryo-EM methods to capture origin-dependent helicase activation. He returned to Australia in 2024 to take up a continuing appointment as Senior Lecturer of Cell and Molecular Biology at UOW. Since completing his PhD, Dr Lewis has secured >$2.5 million in competitive funding as principal investigator; he has held uninterrupted competitive research fellowships since 2019. He has published research in in high-impact life sciences journals (e.g., Molecular Cell; eLife) and interdisciplinary journals (e.g., Nature; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)). Biochemistry and cell biology, Structural biology (incl. macromolecular modelling), Genome structure and regulation