B.S. in Biology from Virginia Tech and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. After postdoctoral studies at the Lineberg Cancer Center at the UNC – Chapel Hill and then as a Damon Runyon – Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico, he joined the Research & Development Department at the Becton Dickinson Monoclonal Center in Mountain View, CA.  In 1990, he joined the DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto, California, where he advanced to Director of Immunobiology.  In 1999, Dr. Lanier joined the faculty of UCSF School of Medicine in San Francisco.  His research group studies Natural Killer (NK) cells, which recognize and eliminate cells that have become transformed or infected by viruses.