Our eminent Board members are individuals having profound expertise in the sphere of vaccine development and public health. The Board ensures strategic direction, represents shareholders, and provides guidance for the company to achieve its goals and produce good outcomes for global public health.
Nick is the Interim Chief Research Programmes Officer at Wellcome, leading a broad interlinked portfolio that focuses on discovery research and three urgent health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate and health.
Nick joined Wellcome in 2019 to lead the Snakebite programme – an £80 million fund to drive a step-change in snakebite treatment around the world. During the pandemic, Nick also led Wellcome’s activities in Covid-19 therapeutics. He was a member of the UK Government’s Antiviral Task Force and led an R&D cooperation of international partners to ensure Covid-19 treatments reached everyone who needs them around the world. In April 2024, he became Interim Chief Research Programmes Officer at Wellcome.
Previously, Nick was Head of the GSK Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus for Diseases of the Developing World in Madrid, Spain. In this role, he was responsible for the discovery and development of medicines to treat some of the most devastating neglected diseases including malaria, tuberculosis, Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis. Nick led the drug discovery through an open innovation agenda of collaboration with many organisations such as Medicines for Malaria Venture, Global Alliance for TB, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Of note, Nick established and implemented the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation (TCOLF) – a not-for-profit foundation that supports academic scientists to visit GSK in Tres Cantos to pursue their own drug discovery ideas, taking advantage of the expertise and facilities available there. This was a first for the Pharma industry and continues to be viewed as a bold, innovative step in neglected tropical disease drug discovery.
John McGrath is the Senior Vice President of Global Vaccine Operations for Merck Manufacturing Division (MMD). Prior to this John led the External Manufacturing and MMD Strategy organization. This included Large and Small Molecule External Manufacturing, Network, Business Development, Alliance, and Strategy. In that role he also led Merck’s manufacturing effort to combat the COVID pandemic. John joined Merck in October 2019 after serving as Senior Vice President Global Industrial Operations with GSK Vaccines. Prior to GSK John was Senior Vice President and GM for Lonza’s Large Scale Mammalian Business and held various positions at Genzyme.
John has a BSc for Dublin City University and an MBA from Babson College.
Karen Chadwick joined Wellcome Trust in autumn 2015. Her responsibilities include ensuring the best possible operating position for Wellcome in relation to financial planning, reporting and cost management.
This includes maintaining its financial controls, ensuring finance systems are robust and driving the quality of its financial and tax reporting.
Before joining Wellcome, Ms. Chadwick was Global Controller for Lonza Biologics, a contract manufacturing business. She qualified as an accountant with PwC and worked for many years at Bristol-Myers Squibb in a variety of finance and commercial roles.
Dr. Priya Agrawal is the Global Commercial Lead for HPV Vaccines at MSD. She is a proven leader with a strong track record for advancing successful public health initiatives and innovations within both the private and public sectors.
She previously served as Chief Behavioral Science Officer for Global Vaccines, Managing Director for the South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa cluster, and led the Vaccines and Women’s Health business unit in the UK. She also launched and led the global initiative MSD for Mothers – a $500 million initiative focused on ensuring no woman dies while giving life.
Prior to MSD, she was Director of Research and Innovation at the Harvard School of Public Health where she led on implementation science and the development and evaluation of digital healthcare innovations. She has worked and travelled in more than 45 countries using the introduction and scale-up of innovations to improve health outcomes.
Dr. Agrawal is trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist in the UK. She received her degrees in medicine from the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, and graduated with a master’s from the Harvard School of Public Health on a Fulbright Scholarship. She is a board member of Pathfinder International and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2015 she was honoured with the Forbes Impact Award in Advocacy.
Professor Gordon Dougan F Med Sci FRS – Professor Dougan is an Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University and Director of the Infection Health Challenge area at Wellcome. He is an internationally recognised expert in vaccinology, global health and infections. He was Head of Pathogens at The Wellcome Sanger Institute (WTSI) for over a decade and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for part of his career. He is an expert on the molecular basis of infection with a strong emphasis on pathogenic mechanisms/immunity, genomics, disease tracking and antibiotic resistance.
Before moving to the WTSI he was the founding Director of the Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection at Imperial College London and a Professor of Biochemistry. He is a member of EMBO, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has received awards nationally and internationally for his work, including the Albert B Sabin Gold Medal for his work on Affordable Vaccines. He received his B Sc and Ph.D. from the University of Sussex and conducted postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington (Seattle) in the laboratory of the Lasker Prize winner Stanley Falkow. During his work in industry developing novel vaccines at an internationally renowned multi-national company now part of GSK and is a founder of Microbiotica.
Dr. Kress received his B.S. in Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University. Upon graduation Mike joined the laboratory of Professor Yoshito Kishi at Harvard, where his research focused on the total synthesis of members of the taxane diterpene family.
Upon receiving his Ph.D. Mike accepted the position of Sr. Research Chemist within the Merck Process Research group where his research focused on the development of efficient synthetic processes to a variety of drug development targets within Merck’s diabetes (PPAR) and pain franchises (BK-1, Nav-1.7).
In 2006 Mike accepted the position of Senior Director of Worldwide Process Research at Cephalon, Inc. While at Cephalon, Mike’s research interests were focused on the enantioselective Kagan oxidation of prochiral sulfides, and efficient manufacturing routes to stuarosporin-like PKC inhibitors.
Mike returned to Merck as Executive Director of Pharmaceutical Development in 2007 and was promoted to the position of Vice President of Pharmaceutical Research and Development in early 2008. During his tenure within drug product development Mike collaborated to support a number of key development programs and product launches, including: Janumet XR, Belsomra, Zepatier.
In 2013 Mike accepted the position of Vice President of Merck’s small molecule Process Research and Development (PRD) and was subsequently promoted to Sr. Vice President of PRD activities across small molecule, biologics and vaccines. In March 2021 Mike was promoted to leading Development Sciences and Clinical Supply (DSCS) bringing the drug substance, drug product, analytical and clinical supply functions together into one organization. Mike is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, and the Innovation and Quality Consortia.
Dr. Raman Rao joined as the Chief Executive Officer at Hilleman Laboratories on 1st February 2020. Dr. Rao has more than 22 years of experience in research and development, manufacturing and commercialization of vaccines for infectious diseases in global pharma and biotech companies. Prior to joining Hilleman Laboratories, Dr. Rao has served as the Vice President of Global Product Operations with Takeda, Singapore, where he enhanced the global product portfolio while successfully leading an international team across Japan, Singapore and United States. The teams worked in the areas of Dengue, Norovirus, Zika, Polio and other vaccines.
Dr. Rao started his career in 2002 with Shantha Biotechnics Limited, part of Sanofi Aventis Group in India, in the area of Clinical Research and Scientific Affairs. He holds a MD in Medical Microbiology from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.
He plans to carry forward Dr. Maurice Hilleman’s legacy for providing effective solutions for Global health, especially those impacting the Low and Middle income countries.
