Mr Raman Rao | Chief Executive Officer
Hilleman Laboratories Singapore Pte Ltd

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