Gowri Murthy, Senior Director — Head of Biomarker Policy & Inventory Management, Translational Medicine, Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA (Merck)

Gowri Murthy leads the Biomarker Policy and Inventory Management groups at Merck, shaping regulatory, privacy, and compliance frameworks and implementing digital inventory solutions to enable biomarker research across the company’s pipeline. With 15+ years of translational medicine experience, she has managed NGS assays — including whole-exome and RNA sequencing — for tumor mutational burden and gene expression profiling, and supported biomarker-enabled oncology trials from protocol and consent development through study closeout.

Her prior roles include Director of Global Market Access for Merck’s pan‑tumor strategy, where she led access and pricing initiatives for the oncology portfolio, contributed to life-cycle management and site-of-care shifts, and advanced patient affordability and access programs. She also contributed to Precision Medicine Policy strategy with the Global Oncology Policy team at Merck.

As an active leader of an organizational public health committee, Gowri works to expand and inform on internal/external opportunities to help improve health equity and access. She participated in Merck’s Fellowship for Global Health, partnering with an NGO in India to advise on scale-up strategies for TB treatment delivery and adoption of eCompliance technology.

She holds a BS in Microbiology from the University of Michigan, a PharmD and an MBA from Creighton University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Rutgers University and Merck prior to her current role at Merck.