James Sheridan Lewis

Dr. James (Jim) Lewis Jr. is a head and neck surgical pathologist with almost 20 years of practice experience. He has been at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for 9 years where he is Professor and Chief of Head and Neck and Endocrine Pathology. He completed medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, completed AP/CP residency and general surgical pathology fellowships there, and then went on to spend almost 10 years as faculty before moving to Nashville.

Dr. Lewis is co-chair of the College of American Pathologist’s Expert Panel on Guidelines for HPV Testing in Head and Neck Carcinomas, is an Editor for the 2021 World Health Organization 5th Edition blue book on classification of head and neck tumors, and President of the North American Society of Head and Neck Pathology. He has three major areas of academic focus. The first is on HPV in head and neck carcinomas with particular focus on testing and application in routine practice, on detection methods, morphology, and prognosis. The second is in using computerized image analysis of digitized pathology slides for prognosis in oropharyngeal and oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma patients, for which he is Co-PI on two funded R01 grants through the NIH. The third is in 3D specimen imaging in collaboration with Dr. Michael Topf. He has over 200 publications in the medical literature including 40+ just on HPV in head and neck tumors.