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.
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. 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.
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.
