Vice President of Research
Professor, Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences
Lisa Cassis, PhD
Professor, Joint Faculty
Dr. Cassis has served as the University of Kentucky's Vice President for Research since June 2015.
As VP for Research, she leads the university’s research enterprise and oversees research proposal development, grants and contracts administration, human subjects protection, 13 multidisciplinary research centers and institutes, and seven service core facilities. She has provided leadership on the UK Strategic Plan and for the new $265 million research building—which will focus UK research efforts on Kentucky’s most pressing health challenges in the areas of cancer, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and substance abuse. The building opened in fall 2018.
She is principal investigator on several, multi-million-dollar federal grants, including serving as program director of an $11.3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant that supports the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) focusing on obesity and cardiovascular diseases. She has published more than 150 scholarly articles, has been continuously funded by the NIH for 30 years, has served on several NIH standing study sections, and is the recipient of several national research awards.
Cassis joined the faculty at UK in 1988 and is currently a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences, the Saha Cardiovascular Research Center, the Graduate Center for Toxicology, the Barnstable Brown Diabetes and Obesity Center, and the College of Pharmacy.
Cassis earned a Bachelor of Science in pharmacy and Ph.D. in pharmacology from West Virginia University and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Wurzburg in Wurzburg, Germany, and the University of Virginia.
Positions
Education
B.S. Pharmacy, West Virginia University
Ph.D. Pharmacology, West Virginia University
We wish to remember and honor those who inhabited this Commonwealth before the arrival of the Europeans. Briefly occupying these lands were the Osage, Wyndott tribe, and Miami peoples. The Adena and Hopewell peoples, who are recognized by the naming of the time period in which they resided here, were here more permanently. Some of their mounds remain in the Lexington area, including at UK’s Adena Park.
In more recent years, the Cherokee occupied southeast Kentucky, the Yuchi southwest Kentucky, the Chickasaw extreme western Kentucky and the Shawnee central Kentucky including what is now the city of Lexington. The Shawnee left when colonization pushed through the Appalachian Mountains. Lower Shawnee Town ceremonial grounds are still visible in Greenup County.
We honor the first inhabitants who were here, respect their culture, and acknowledge the presence of their descendants who are here today in all walks of life including fellow pharmacists and healthcare professionals.