Raman Rao

CEO
Hilleman Laboratories

As Chief Executive Officer of Hilleman Laboratories, a joint venture between Merck & Co and Wellcome Trust, Dr. Raman Rao leads the charge for providing effective, affordable and impactful solutions for infectious diseases and global public health, especially for low- and middle-income countries.

Dr. Rao has over two decades of experience in research and development, manufacturing and commercialisation of vaccines for infectious diseases in global pharma and biotech companies. He 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 the United States. The teams worked in the areas of dengue, norovirus, zika, polio and other vaccines.

Dr. Rao started his career in 2001 with Shantha Biotechnics Limited, part of Sanofi Aventis Group in India, in Clinical Research and Scientific Affairs and worked in different roles in R&D at Sanofi. He holds an MD in Clinical Microbiology, Infectious disease from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in India.

Dr. Rao currently serves as the Co-Chair of  WHO’s Product Development for Vaccines Advisory Committee (PDVAC), an independent committee of experts providing external advice to WHO on priority infectious disease pathogens, associated vaccine and monoclonal antibody product development approaches and related manufacturing and delivery technologies.

In 2024, Dr. Rao was appointed to the Board of Directors of PATH, an international, non-profit global health organisation with a mission to advance health equity through innovation and partnerships. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of International Vaccine Institute (IVI), serves on the Technical Advisory Committee at MinervaX, a Danish clinical stage biotech company developing a state-of-the-art prophylactic vaccine against Group B Streptococcus, and on the Board of GCBC (Shantha) vaccines, India.