Caroline Fox, MD, MPH, is currently Vice President of Human Genetics and Pharmacogenomics (GpGx) at Merck Research Labs (MRL), which she joined in 2015. There, she leads a group of ~100 geneticists, computational biologists, and molecular biologists to leverage genetics and genomics to drive drug discovery and development across the R&D pipeline. Caroline’s group is responsible for leveraging human genetics to drive target identification and validation, building genomic capabilities, and leveraging clinical trial samples to identify and apply genetic, genomic, and cellular biomarkers to inform clinical decision making and exploratory research.

Prior to joining Merck, Caroline was a tenured investigator at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Metabolic and Population Health and Deputy Branch Chief of the Population Sciences Branch of the NHLBI.  Caroline was instrumental in establishing the CKDGen consortium, a large genomics consortium dedicated to uncovering loci for chronic kidney disease. She authored nearly 400 peer-reviewed publications, served as an Associate Editor at Circulation, and served as Vice Chair of the Functional Genomics Translational Biology Council of the American Heart Association. Caroline was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2012, and named on the Thomson Reuters list of “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Caroline completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and she completed her internship, residency, and endocrinology fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, where she maintains an active clinical practice.