James Lillard is a full Professor at Morehouse School of Medicine with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Kentucky School of Medicine, where he studied Yersinia “plague” pathogenesis. Dr. Lillard completed post-doctoral training in mucosal immunology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He also completed an Executive M.B.A. from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University with a focus on biotechnology.
He has previously worked as a product development engineer for IBM. He has served as founding Director(s) for the M.S. in health informatics and M.S. in biotechnology (ranked #1 out of 155 similar programs by Intelligent.com) programs. Dr. Lillard uses both in silico and in vivo methods to develop biologics, molecular tests, and interventions to better prevent, diagnose, and treat chronic diseases like cancer. He has authored over 300 scientific communications, including patents, abstracts, and publications that have been cited over 11,000 times.
Dr. Lillard established the technology transfer office at Morehouse School of Medicine, where he serves as its Director and has overseen the creation of 13 start-ups that have raised over $250 million. Notably, Morehouse School of Medicine licensed patent rights for the use of Atrasentan to Chinook Therapeutics, which was acquired for $3.2 billion by Novartis. Currently, Dr. Lillard directs the Morehouse Comprehensive Approaches to Reimagine Health Equity Solutions (CARhES) initiative, which will aggregate and analyze real-world and genomic data from African American patients/participants in the Black Belt. This is one of the largest precision health initiatives of its kind focused on health equity.
