S. Sean Tu, PhD, JD

S. Sean Tu is a Professor of Law at the University of Alabama and is a nationally recognized expert on patent law and drug law. He holds degrees in chemistry and microbiology from the University of Florida and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, where he was a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. Dr. Tu received his doctorate in pharmacology from Cornell University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. He is affiliated with Harvard Medical School’s Program On Regulation, Therapeutics And Law (PORTAL) and a Scholar at Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

A prolific scholar with over fifty publications, his work has appeared in top journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature Biotechnology, and Stanford Technology Law Review, among others. He has co-authored several amicus briefs, one of which was cited by the US Supreme Court. He is co-author of a casebook on biotechnology and a casebook on Intellectual Property Law.

In 2021-2022, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School. The National Institutes of Health Care Management awarded Professor Tu a grant to study the intersection between patent law and drug pricing. Prior to joining the University of Alabama, Professor Tu was a faculty member at the West Virginia University College of Law. Before his academic appointments, Professor Tu was an associate at Foley & Lardner LLP, where he prosecuted pharmaceutical patents.

In addition to his scholarly work and public service, Professor Tu served two years as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development at the West Virginia University College of Law. He has worked as an expert witness for patent law cases and also helped start a company focused on patent prosecution analytics and a small biotechnology company focused on cancer cell biology.

Back to Our Team