Colette Ranucci

Vice President, Global Vaccines Science & Technology at Merck

Speaker

Dr. Colette Ranucci has over 30 years’ experience in Vaccine and Biologics process development, commercialization, and manufacturing. She is currently Vice President of Global Vaccines Science and Technology, responsible for vaccine commercialization, life cycle management and technical operations across all internal and external manufacturing sites within the Vaccines network; she also serves as the Diversity and Inclusion Sponsor for Global Science, Engineering and Commercialization, and a member of the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Industrial Advisory Board (Rutgers School of Engineering).

Upon joining Merck & Co., Inc. in 1992, Colette began her career in process development within Bioprocess R&D (Merck Research Laboratories), supporting development of several early-stage product candidates. During this time, she took on positons of increasing levels of responsibility, leading development teams across several vaccine programs. Subsequently, Colette focused on building organizational capabilities in support of late-stage process development, technology transfers (internal and external), process validation, facility start-up, and associated filing strategy and activities for late-stage therapeutic protein and vaccine product candidates. She established the Vaccines Commercialization organization at Merck in 2010, supporting the full portfolio of Merck’s vaccines products, with a focus on expanding access to emerging markets. She then established and led Biologics External Manufacturing, building and managing a broad set of partnerships supporting the manufacture of Merck’s Biologics products. Subsequently, she stepped in as head of Global Technical Operations for Biologics and Sterile Manufacturing, prior to her role as head of Global Large Molecule Technical Operations, supporting Vaccines and Biologics manufacturing.

Colette holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Rutgers University, where she also completed her undergraduate studies, receiving a B.S. in Biochemical Engineering and a B.A. in German.