Colin Hill

Pharmaceutical executive Colin Hill was born on September 13, 1972 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Foster and Joan Hill. He earned his B.S. degree in physics from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia in 1996 and went on to earn his M.S. degree in physics from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1998. He then attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York from 1997 to 2000, where he pursued a Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics.

In 1997, Hill was hired as a teaching assistant in the Cornell Department of Physics in Ithaca, New York, and then he served as a solid-state physics fellow and systems biology graduate research assistant at Cornell University in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Hill then joined Gene Network Science Inc. as its chairman in 2000 and then, in 2008, he co-founded and worked as chief executive officer of Aitia, an AI biotech pharmaceutical company for neurodegenerative disorders and oncology. That same year, Hill co-founded Fina Technologies, a developer of financial software, where he serves as chairman.

Active in the biopharmaceutical community, in 2009, Hill became a founding board member of AesRx, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to finding a treatment for sickle cell anemia. From 2012 to 2013, Hill also served as founding chairman of the first O’Reilly Media's Strata Rx Conference, a healthcare big data conference in San Francisco, California; in 2016 as a member of the board of directors for Biotelemetry; and in 2017 as a member of the board of directors for PPD, a clinical research organization. He joined Centrexion’s board of directors in 2022 and Fulcrum Therapeutics’ board of directors in 2024.

In 2009, Hill was named one of the “25 Most Influential African Americans” by Powerful Media in association with J.P. Morgan. In 2010, he was awarded the Walter Cove Award by the Accelerated Cures Project for his contributions towards curing multiple sclerosis disease. In 2014, Hill’s co-authored article, “Transforming Medicine: A Manifesto” about using precision medicine to find a cure for cancer, was published by Scientific American Worldview. Hill was named to the “Top 50 Healthcare Technology CEOs of 2019” list by the Healthcare Technology Report.

Hill resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Colin Hill was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 28, 2024.