Jinghai (Jim) Xu currently serves as Executive Director of Corporate Development/Strategic Planning at Merck & Co (known as MSD outside of US and Canada). He leads a team of biopharmaceutical professionals who are responsible for competitive analyses, insights, and recommendations across multiple therapeutic areas to enable critical decision making in commercial strategies, R&D investments, corporate development, and business development & licensing.  Previously Jim has led research activities in knowledge discovery, knowledge management, systems biology, predictive toxicology, and automated biotechnology at Merck, Pfizer, and CuraGen.  Jim received his Ph.D. in Toxicology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at Cambridge, USA.  He has been honored with a number of awards including Whitaker Health Sciences Fellowship, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Young Investigator Award, Pfizer Central Research Achievement Award, and Merck Special Achievement Award.  Jim also serves as an industrial-academic advisory committee member and an author/editor/reviewer for Wiley & Sons and Cambridge University Press.

MSD is a leading global biopharmaceutical company that has been inventing for life for more than a century. Bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Through our prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and animal health products, we work with customers and operate in more than 140 countries to deliver innovative health solutions. We also demonstrate our commitment to increasing access to healthcare through far-reaching policies, programs and partnerships. Today MSD continues to be at the forefront of research to advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and communities around the world.