Tim Grese

Dr. Tim Grese received his bachelor’s in chemistry from Northwestern University in 1983. In 1985, he began his graduate studies with Professor Barry Trost as a Wisconsin Alumni Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991. After two years as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, he joined Eli Lilly in 1992 as a senior organic chemist.

Grese has held a variety of scientific and management positions within the Discovery Chemistry and Research Technologies division at Lilly, including his most recent role as chief scientific officer for lead generation and external innovation in 2010. His independent research contributions have focused on drug discovery in the area of nuclear hormone receptors and in the therapeutic areas of osteoporosis and diabetes. Grese has been a leader in the design and development of new scientific strategies and technologies directed at small molecule lead generation. He has championed knowledge-based approaches to lead generation, incorporating computational and structure-based design methodologies and biophysical assay techniques with automated chemical synthesis.  In this role, he also oversaw Lilly’s Open Innovation Drug Discovery program, a novel interface for establishing academic-industrial drug discovery partnerships, establishing research collaborations with Notre Dame, the University of California, Irvine, NIH, and others. He retired from Lilly at the end of 2019 and is currently consulting for venture capital and pharmaceutical concerns particularly in the areas of pharmaceutical lead generation and new frameworks for public-private partnership in early-stage drug discovery.