Erik Van Asselt, PhD MSD

Erik van Asselt studied Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (cum laude) and subsequently received his PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Groningen.

Since 2000, he has been working for Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD) in various positions within Quality, Manufacturing, Packaging and Logistics. As a certified Black Belt, he is and was involved in many processes including Quality Management Systems, Cold Chain Management, Qualification of Passive and Active Systems, Transport Mode Conversions, Forwarder Management, Quality Risk Management and Data Integrity.

In February 2009, he became the chairman of the PDA Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Interest Group (PCCIG) European Branch. He led the PDA PCCIG Task Force on Risk Management for Temperature Controlled Distribution (see PDA Technical Report 58). In addition, he contributed to PDA Technical Reports 53, 64 and 72, and wrote many articles related to cold chain management.

Since 2009, he has been one of two co-chairs of the annual PDA Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Conference in Europe. In 2014, he received the PDA Distinguished Service Award.