Gail Cassell

Biography

Gail H. Cassell, Executive Vice President of TB Drug Development, IDRI, is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Gail recently retired as Vice President, Scientific Affairs and Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious Diseases at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis where she was responsible for launching the Lilly MDR-TB philanthropic effort and establishing and leading the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative, a nonprofit launched in 2007. Formerly she was Vice President of Infectious Diseases Drug Discovery and Clinical Development at Lilly, where she led a hepatitis C protease inhibitor program from the discovery phase to clinical candidate, and the development of a new antibiotic from clinical development to product decision. Prior to Lilly, Gail served as the Charles H. McCauley Professor and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama Schools of Medicine and Dentistry at Birmingham. Gail has served on a number of boards and committees, and is currently a member of the NIH Science Management Board, the newly appointed NIH Board of Trustees, and the Advisory Council of the Fogarty International Center of NIH. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Gail has been widely recognized for her research accomplishments including two honorary degrees. Gail received her BS from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and obtained her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Research Interest

Microbiology