Albert J. Allen, MD, Ph.D.

Dedicated to pediatric health care, Albert J. Allen, MD, Ph.D. has excelled as a child psychiatrist, pharmacologist and senior medical fellow at Eli Lilly and Company since 2011. In his role, he has been responsible for developing Strattera, which is used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and for securing approval from the Federal Drug Administration. He has also been involved in conducting various pediatric studies, designing trials and providing regulatory input for other psychiatric drugs. Dr. Allen previously served as a clinical research physician, senior clinical research physician and senior medical director between 2000 and 2011. Additionally, he chaired the pediatric steering committee, the drug abuse liability and dependence advisory committee and the bioethics advisory committee at the Lilly’s Development Center of Excellence.

At the start of his career journey, Dr. Allen matriculated at the University of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and a Master of Science in biochemistry in 1980. In 1988, he attained a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy in pharmacology from the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. Dr. Allen began his tenure as a resident physician in general psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Iowa. Subsequently, from 1992 to 1995, he became a research fellow and resident in the division of child psychiatry and behavioral pediatrics at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Allen also taught as an assistant professor at the Institute for Juvenile Research and the founder of the Pediatric Anxiety and Tic Disorders Clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, remaining through 2000.

Finding great success throughout the course of his career, Dr. Allen was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in Pediatric Drug Development Award from the Eli Lilly and Company in 2021, as well as named to the Lilly Product Team of the Year in 2003. Earlier, he took home a Jay G. Hirsch Excellence in Child Psychiatry Teaching Award from the University of Illinois at Chicago Child Psychiatry Fellows in 1998 and a Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Scientific Achievement from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1995. Likewise, Dr. Allen has authored approximately 55 scholarly articles in various peer-reviewed psychiatry and psychopharmacology journals. He also presented “Abstract: A Biopharmaceutical Company’s Bioethics Position on Pediatric Drug and Device Development” at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference in 2014.

Hailing from a medical background, Dr. Allen’s grandmother was one of the first nurses at Cherokee Mental Health Institute in Iowa, while his mother was one of the head nurses at a psychiatric hospital. His parents met in a psychiatric ward, as his father, a lawyer and a Korean War veteran, worked there as an orderly. Dr. Allen attributes his attraction to child psychiatry mainly to his own curiosity and his later professional success to curiosity and flexibility. When he began to look at medical specialties to dive into, he found the brain and neuroscience very interesting and was fascinated by using Benzodiazepine receptors in psychiatry, particularly in the treatment of anxiety. Looking ahead, Dr. Allen aims to remain active in pediatric drug development and safety, the bioethics of pediatric drug research, and in the improvement of how pediatric clinical trials are conducted worldwide.