Fran Lewitter Explained

Fran Lewitter
Workplaces:	Brandeis University Whitehead Institute
Alma Mater:	University of Colorado Boulder Harvard Medical School
Thesis Title:	Genetic models of reading disability
Thesis Url:	https://lib.ugent.be/en/catalog/rug01:000255094
Thesis Year:	1979
Known For:	GenBank
Awards:	ISCB Fellow
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Frances I. Lewitter is a computational biologist and the founding director of the Whitehead Institute’s Bioinformatics and Research Computing (BaRC) program.^[1]

Education and career

Lewitter gained her PhD in human genetics and statistical genetics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1979. Following a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School where she worked on the GenBank project, she joined the Whitehead Institute to run what is considered to be one of the first bioinformatics core facilities.^[2]

Lewitter is a strong advocate for bioinformatics education, and was education editor of PLOS Computational Biology from 2005 to 2014.

Awards and honors

Lewitter was awarded the 2017 Outstanding Contributions to ISCB Award by the International Society for Computational Biology.^[3] In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the ISCB.^[4]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Lewitter named International Society for Computational Biology Fellow . Whitehead Institute of MIT . 13 July 2022 . EN.
2. Chang . Jeffrey . Core services: Reward bioinformaticians . Nature . April 2015 . 520 . 7546 . 151–152 . 10.1038/520151a. free .
3. Fogg . Christiana N . Kovats . Diane E . Berger . Bonnie . Message from the ISCB: 2017 Outstanding Contributions to ISCB Award Given to Fran Lewitter . Bioinformatics . 15 July 2017 . 33 . 14 . 2249–2250 . 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx291. free .
4. Web site: April 28, 2022: ISCB Congratulates and Introduces the 2022 Class of Fellows! . www.iscb.org . 13 July 2022.