Charlotte Vernhes | Director Scientific and Medical Affairs
Vaccines Europe

Charlotte Vernhes is a bioengineer with 14 years of diversified experience in vaccine research and development. Since 2023, she leads Scientific and Medical Affairs at Vaccines Europe, a specialised vaccines group within the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), the professional association of the innovative pharmaceutical industry in Europe. Her mission at Vaccines Europe is to foster a vibrant and collaborative research and innovation vaccine ecosystem in Europe and to support evidence-based value recognition of lifecourse immunisation in Europe to protect people against evolving health challenges.  Charlotte holds a Bioengineer degree (M.Eng.) from the University of Technology of Compiègne, a M.S. in Life Sciences and Health: Cancerology from the Paris-Saclay University in France, and a certificate in AI for business strategy from MIT Sloan. She gained in-depth vaccines R&D experience at Sanofi, ranging from bench science, with a focus on immunoassay development, to scientific strategy and management of vaccine projects and portfolio. She contributed to the assessment of AI readiness for vaccine development applications through pilot projects and hands-on application of machine learning to vaccine biomarker discovery. As Translational Lead, she engaged cross-functional teams to develop cohesive plans to derisk projects and optimise clinical testing of candidate bacterial and viral vaccines. Most recently, she led European partnerships and stakeholder engagement activities in the External Scientific Affairs department and led RESCEU and PROMISE, two European IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) consortiums dedicated to RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) where she focused on fostering public-private-patient collaboration, communication of project findings, and raising RSV disease awareness.