Rate My Professor Elliot Lefkowitz

Elliot Lefkowitz is a Professor of Microbiology in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine. He joined UAB in 1987 as a postdoctoral researcher after training at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied viral genetics and developed an interest in virus evolution through sequencing and data analysis. Transitioning to full-time computational research, Lefkowitz became one of the first at UAB to focus primarily on bioinformatics. In the early 1990s, he taught UAB's inaugural graduate-level bioinformatics course and established a core facility for data analysis via the Center for AIDS Research in 1992, which relocated to the Center for Clinical and Translational Science in 2008. He currently directs Informatics for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science, the Molecular and Genetic Bioinformatics Facility for the Center for AIDS Research, and the Bioinformatics Core for the UAB Microbiome Facility. Lefkowitz also serves as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and co-directs the undergraduate Bachelor of Science program in bioinformatics, a collaboration between Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics and Data Science.

Lefkowitz's research specializes in microbial genomics and evolution, bioinformatics, and clinical informatics, with a core focus on virus genomics, taxonomy, and evolutionary history. His laboratory provides genomic data analysis for viruses, bacteria, and model organisms, supporting insights into replication, disease mechanisms, pandemics, vaccines, and antivirals. A virologist by passion, he reconstructs viral phylogenies to classify viruses by sequence similarities. For over 20 years, he has been Data Secretary on the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses Executive Committee, maintaining its taxonomy database and website. As Principal Investigator for the Bacterial Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center, he delivers data and tools for bacterial and viral infectious disease research. Lefkowitz has produced over 300 publications, accumulating more than 38,000 citations, and hosted the ICTV annual meeting at UAB in 2025, underscoring his impact on viral taxonomy and bioinformatics.