Dr. Schmidt is Vice President of Clinical Development in clinical oncology at Merck & Co., Inc. and head of the External Collaborations Product Development Team. Emmett joined the company in 2011 as a senior principal scientist in clinical oncology and pursued the development of multiple signal transduction inhibitors along with exploratory biomarker approaches to response and dose finding. In 2013, Dr. Schmidt moved to late-stage development and joined the pembrolizumab team, taking on key responsibilities for initial pembrolizumab filing activities in addition to the initiation of Merck’s pivotal studies in adjuvant melanoma and first-line head and neck cancer. In 2014 he was appointed to lead the External Collaborations PDT. The team has since developed more than 300 company collaborations evaluating Pembrolizumab combination therapies with more than 200 different compounds addressing more than 170 different targets. Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Schmidt was professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Emmett was a founding member of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Dr. Schmidt holds M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and earned both his A.B. and M.A in biology from Harvard University.