Udit Batra has been appointed a new member of the executive board of Merck KGaA. The world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company, it is headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany and operates in close to 70 countries. Batra, working out of the greater Boston area, is the president and CEO of the life science business sector of Merck KGaA, known as EMD Millipore Sigma in the United States.

Batra was formerly the president and CEO of consumer healthcare in the Merck Group. Previously, he held leadership positions at Novartis, a global healthcare company based in Switzerland. Batra received his BSE from the University of Delaware, where he is currently a member of the Chemical Engineering Advisory Council. His Ph.D. in chemical engineering was earned at Princeton in 1996.