Sewer joined the faculty of the
Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002, where she studied how cytochrome P450 enzymes regulate the production of steroid hormones. She discovered that
nuclear receptors are targets for a type of
lipids called
sphingolipids and that specific sphingolipids and
phospholipids could act as endogenous (natural) ligands (binding partners) for an important regulator of steroid hormone biosynthesis called
steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1). This showed that nuclear lipids could play a previously unknown role in regulating gene expression. Sewer was very active in the scientific community; she was a member of the editorial boards of
Molecular Endocrinology and
Steroids and served on numerous committees, including the Mentoring Committee of Women in Endocrinology, the Publications Committee of the
Endocrine Society, and the Minority Affairs Committees of the Endocrine Society and the
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). She co-founded and helped lead grant writing workshops and a mentorship program through the ASBMB to help advance the careers of underrepresented minority scientists. Her leadership roles included serving as Deputy Chair for the ASBMB Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) and associate director at UCSD's Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) program, which supports underrepresented minority postdoctoral fellows. She also served on
NIH study sections on Training and Workforce development and Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology and was secretary/treasurer of the
American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET)'s Drug Metabolism Division. == Honors and awards ==