Our Board ensures that all our projects are conducted with utmost integrity, keeping in mind the interests of our stakeholders. The Board members also set and guide Hilleman Laboratories strategic direction by providing counsel and oversight to meet the goals and key milestones.
Our eminent Board members are individuals having profound expertise in the sphere of vaccine development and public health.
Dr. Gerd Zettlmeissl is the former Chief Executive Officer of the Austria-based biotechnology company Intercell AG and is an accomplished vaccine expert and biopharmaceutical business executive. He has more than 25 years of scientific and leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. While at Intercell AG from 2001 to 2011, he built the company from a private start up company to a publicly listed international organisation with more than 400 employees. As CEO, he secured regulatory approval and led the launch of an improved Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, and oversaw efforts to build and advance a broad based development portfolio of vaccines. Prior to joining Intercell, Dr. Zettlmeissl held senior management roles at Chiron Corp. and Behringwerke AG. In 2010, he was named Vaccine Biotech CEO of the Year at the World Vaccine Congress.
He currently serves on various supervisory boards. Inter alia he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of GlycoVaxyn, a vaccine biotech company in Switzerland, and a member of the Board of Aeras, a non-profit organisation developing tuberculosis vaccines.
Sanat Chattopadhyay is Executive Vice President of MSD and President of the Merck Manufacturing Division, with responsibility for MSD’s worldwide manufacturing operations supporting global sales revenues of approximately 40 billion USD.
He and his leadership team oversee a network of manufacturing, commercialisation and distribution sites that produce pharmaceutical, vaccine, biologic/therapeutic protein and animal health products.
Mr. Chattopadhyay serves as a member of MSD’s Executive Committee. He has a proven senior leadership track record of commercialisation, manufacturing and supply chain excellence in therapeutic proteins, vaccines and pharmaceuticals for Hoechst, Aventis, Wyeth and MSD for more than 30 years.
Outside MSD, Mr. Chattopadhyay is a member of the Advisory Board of USA-India Chamber of Commerce.
Before joining MSD in November 2009, Mr. Chattopadhyay worked for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals as Senior Vice President, New Products & Process Development. A graduate Chemical Engineer and a post-graduate Industrial Engineer from India, he started his career with Hoechst Pharmaceuticals in 1983 and worked in many senior leadership assignments in 5 countries across 3 continents, rising to the level of Senior Vice President, Product Development & Supply at Aventis where he led global supply chain, including new product commercialisation, technology and engineering.
In his current role, Mr. Chattopadhyay has successfully launched a new strategy for the manufacturing and supply organisation, restructuring it into independent but interconnected business units based on technology platforms and further integrated supply planning and operations across the company.
Dr. Daria Hazuda serves as Vice President, Vaccines & Infectious Diseases in the Global Medical and Scientific Affairs organization at MSD. In this role, Dr. Hazuda provides important scientific input across all infectious diseases and vaccines programs, with a primary focus on the antiviral assets being developed for the treatment against COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, and HIV.
Dr. Hazuda has an impressive 30+ years of experience working in Drug Discovery. She joined MSD in 1989 as a Senior Research Biochemist in the antiviral research group where her pioneering research delineated the biochemical mechanism of the complex process of HIV integration and, subsequently, the development and ultimate approval in 2007 of ISENTRESS, the first HIV integrase strand transfer inhibitor. She went on to successfully lead Drug Discovery teams working important antiviral medicines including ZEPATIER (elbasvir/grazoprevir) for hepatitis C, PIFELTRO (doravirine) for HIV and, most recently, LAGEVRIO (molnupiravir) for COVID-19. In 2017, she was the founding Chief Scientific Officer of the Merck Research Laboratory Exploratory Science Center in Cambridge, MA, overseeing a team developing exciting emerging biological science.
The author of more than 200 research articles, reviews and book chapters, Dr. Hazuda holds 28 U.S. Patents. She has received multiple awards both as a member of successful drug discovery teams and personally for her contributions to antiviral research. Most notably, Dr. Hazuda is the recipient of the Bernie Field Lecture Award, the David Barry DART (Development of Antiretroviral Therapies) Achievement Award, and the Distinguished Research Career Award from the Center for Retrovirus Research at Ohio State University. She was also elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2010.
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.
Prof. Gagandeep Kang is currently Executive Director – THSTI, Faridabad and Head of the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory at the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, India. Over the past two decades, she has built a research programme that has conducted key studies to understand enteric infectious diseases in impoverished communities. Prof. Gagandeep’s research has demonstrated the high burden of rotavirus disease across India, the genetic diversity of viruses and the factors that affect transmission and disease in hospital and community settings. She has investigated the protection induced by natural infection in the largest birth cohort study on rotaviral infections in the world. Working in partnership with non-governmental organisations and the government, she has carried out phase I-III studies of rotaviral vaccines and provided laboratory support for vaccine development in India and for other developing countries. With the Indian Council for Medical Research and the World Health Organization, she has supported the establishment of networks of sentinel hospitals and laboratories that carry out surveillance for rotavirus disease in children and ancillary studies.
Prof. Kang has built a strong inter-disciplinary research programme that uses careful and detailed field epidemiology with molecular tools for characterisation of infectious agents and host response to infection to understand and change factors that affect transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae. Observational, interventional and mechanistic studies on enteric infection and nutrition have demonstrated the complex relationships between gut function and physical and cognitive development. Based at an outstanding medical college, she has established a strong training programme for students and young faculty in clinical translational medicine aiming to build a cadre of clinical researchers studying relevant problems in India. The large body of research conducted by her group has led to practical interventions to prevent diarrhoeal disease, and continues to lay the groundwork for further interventions in the form of treatment techniques and vaccines. Prof. Kang has published over 200 papers in national and international journals. She is an Associate Editor for PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and for Tropical Medicine and International Health, sits on the editorial board of Scientific Reports and is on several review committees for national and international research funding agencies.
She is a member of the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and the Immunization and Vaccine Implementation Research Advisory Committee and chairs the Immunization Technical Advisory Group for the WHO’s South East Asian Region. She serves on the scientific advisory committee of national and international institutions, including the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, the Translational Health Science Technology Institute and the International Vaccine Institute. She is an Independent Director of the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, a section 8 company established by the Government of India.
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. 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.
