Dennis Lee, Ph.D.

Senior Program Officer in the Accelerator, Global Health
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Dennis Lee is a Senior Program Officer in the Accelerator at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He began his career in 1992 as a medicinal chemist with SmithKline Beecham, and in 1999 joined Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, a start-up that developed molecular fragment-based approaches for drug discovery. He returned to the newly-merged GSK in 2001 and led a chemistry department in cardiovascular and urogenital diseases. Over the next several years, his group progressed several compounds into clinical development. Subsequently, Dennis headed Chemistry and Preclinical Development in the new Ophthalmology unit (2008) and was Director of Drug Delivery, Platform Technology and Sciences (2014), a newly-formed drug delivery group whose mission was to seek and develop novel drug delivery technologies that align with GSK’s portfolio.

He relocated to Seattle to join the Gates Foundation in 2018 to support novel drug delivery technologies, which included an extensive portfolio of long-acting contraceptive and HIV prevention products and nucleic acid vaccine/therapeutic programs for global health. In 2022, he transitioned to a new role within the foundation in the Accelerator, developing a portfolio of curative gene therapy approaches for Sickle Cell Disease and HIV, and early-stage innovation portfolios.