About Fiona Marshall

Fiona is a highly experienced research scientist and drug hunter who has worked across the Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry. Fiona is currently Senior Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Sciences, Preclinical development and Translational Medicine at Merck where she leads teams in disease biology (Neuroscience, Oncology, Infectious Disease, Immunology and Cardiometabolic disease), chemistry, biologics, genetics and genomics, biomarker discovery, DMPK, Pharmacometrics and modelling, drug safety, Bioanalytics, Digital Health and Translational medicine. Fiona joined Merck in 2018 with a remit to establish a new research site in London, UK. She was subsequently promoted to head of Neuroscience Discovery where she led Neuroscience research activities in the USA and UK.

Prior to joining Merck, Fiona was Chief Scientific officer of SoseiHeptares. Fiona was a founder and CSO of Heptares Therapeutics a highly successful UK Biotech company focused on structure- based drug design that was subsequently acquired by the Japanese Biotech company Sosei. Fiona spent 5 years as an Independent consultant working as an advisor to multiple Biotech and Venture capital companies. Fiona was Director of Molecular Pharmacology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and spent 10 years at GSK holding senior positions in Molecular Pharmacology and Neuroscience.
Fiona is well known for her work in the field of G protein-coupled receptors and has published extensively in that field. She won the 2012 WISE Women of Outstanding Achievement for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the 2015 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award for chemistry and the Vane Medal from the British Pharmacological society.. She is a Fellow of the the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Fiona holds a BSc in Biochemistry from University of Bath (UK) and PhD in Neuroscience from University of Cambridge.