Lara Wolfson | Associate Vice President, Head of HTA Statistics
MSD

Lara Wolfson, PhD, currently serves as the Associate Vice President and Head of HTA Statistics at MSD (known as Merck & Co. in the US and Canada), based in Brussels, Belgium.
In this role, she oversees a dedicated team of over 75 statisticians, working collaboratively across the organization to develop innovative quantitative solutions for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) challenges.
Lara has had a diverse career path, including roles as a value-evidence strategy leader in Vaccines at Merck's Center for Observational Research and Real-World Evidence (US),  and in Global Public Health and Global Market Access at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Belgium).
Earlier in her career, Lara held various roles at the World Health Organization in Switzerland, where she focused on epidemiology, health economics, and programme management for vaccines and infectious diseases.
Additionally, she has held academic positions at Brigham Young University and the University of Waterloo.
Lara co-leads the HTA European Special Interest Group (ESIG) of EFSPI (European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry).
She holds MS and PhD degrees in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and completed her undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University (Canada).