Michel Vounatsos is Chief Executive Officer at Biogen and has served as a director since January 2017. As CEO, his time has been spent strategically bolstering Biogen as a worldwide pioneer in neuroscience and adjacent therapeutic areas, positioning the company for long-term growth through a multi-franchise portfolio.  

He brings comprehensive global leadership expertise resulting from decades of service as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a unique academic perspective from his time studying both medicine and business. He joined Biogen as Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer in April 2016, holding that role until his promotion to CEO. Prior to that, he had a 20-year career at Merck, where he worked in diverse markets globally, including China, France, and Poland. His last role at Merck was President, Primary Care and Customer Centricity in the United States. During his tenure at Merck, he helped transform its go-to-market model and further expanded its business in mature and emerging markets. Previously, he held management positions at Ciba-Geigy AG, a pharmaceutical company.  

He is a director of PerkinElmer, Inc., a global scientific technology and life science research company. He serves on the advisory board of China’s Tsinghua University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences; the Supervisory Board of Liryc, the Electrophysiology and Heart Modeling Institute at the University of Bordeaux, France; and as a member of the MIT Presidential CEO Advisory Board.