United States of America
James Versalovic, M.D., Ph.D., graduated from Strake Jesuit (Houston TX) with Highest Honors in 1982 and from the University of Texas at Austin in 1985 (B.A. in Plan II with High Honors). He received his PhD in cellular and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in 1994 and his MD with Honors at BCM in 1995. Dr. Versalovic pursued clinical pathology residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in Comparative Medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Versalovic is board-certified in Clinical Pathology, Molecular Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics.
Dr. Versalovic currently serves as the inaugural President of the Texas Children’s Research Institute (TCRI) as well as the Pathologist-in-Chief and Chair of The Texas Children’s Department of Pathology at Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Versalovic served as Interim Physician-in-Chief in 2020, and as Pediatrician-in-Chief in 2021 at Texas Children’s Hospital. He holds the Milton J. Finegold endowed chair as Professor of Pathology & Immunology, and is Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular and Human Genetics, and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at BCM. He also serves as Vice-Chair of Pathology and Immunology at BCM. He served as Co-Director of the NIH-funded Medical Scientist (MD-PhD) training program at BCM for 12 years.
As an accomplished physician-scientist, Dr. Versalovic was recognized with BCM’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2010 and was elected to The American Academy of Microbiology in 2019. He is Associate Director of the NIH-funded Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center. In 2005, he received the Lansky Award as a national leader in pathology under the age of 45 from the College of American Pathologists Foundation.
Dr. Versalovic leads one of the two largest children’s hospital-based pathology departments in the USA. He founded and still leads the first microbiome center based in a children’s hospital. Dr. Versalovic helped create the new field of metagenomic medicine by co-leading the NIH-funded national Human Microbiome Project since its inception in 2008. His research program has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Dr. Versalovic has authored 220 primary manuscripts and 43 book chapters, while holding 4 U.S. patents. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Manual of Clinical Microbiology, the “Bible” of laboratory-based diagnosis of human infections.
Dr. Versalovic simultaneously led both Pediatrics and Pathology for 20 months during the pandemic while advancing diagnosis and patient care at Texas Children’s. Dr. Versalovic delivered timely information about COVID and children’s health to the public through interviews with local and national media outlets, including a
live interview on Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan in September 2021. He also co-hosted our First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, at Texas Children’s to spotlight pediatric vaccination efforts in November 2021.
