• Wilmington, N.C.-based contract research organization (CRO) PPD promoted Susan Atkinson to senior vice president for global statistics and data management. Her duties will include overseeing electronic data capture operations and informatics. Atkinson began at PPD in 1991 as a senior biostatistician and most recently led PPD’s U.S. biostatistics, programming and data management operations.

• Whitehouse, N.J.-based pharmaceutical company Merck named David E. Kelley, M.D., as vice president of the company’s diabetes and obesity research franchise. His will lead the group's investigators in biomarker, experimental medicine and imaging activities to help optimize drugs through phase II clinical trials. Kelley spent 20 years at the University of Pittsburg studying insulin resistance and diabetes. He was most recently the director of the Obesity & Nutrition Research Center.

• London-based CRO Chiltern International’s Patricia Lovell-Hoare, the company’s executive vice president of regulatory affairs, as been invited to become a Fellow at the Royal Society of Medicine. 
• Gaithersburg, Mary.-based preclinical CRO Bridge Pharmaceuticals has restructured its executive management team after it hired Thomas Oakley as chief executive officer. Prior to joining Bridge, Oakley was founder and president of the consulting firm DTO Associates. Previously, he worked at the CRO Covance for nine years as global vice president of finance for its early stage group. Bridge also appointed Patrick Jeanmonod as chief financial officer and promoted Ronald Marler to chief scientific officer.

• London-based CRO Premier Research appointed Chris Nowell vice president of clinical trial management for the company’s international division. Most recently, Nowell was director of project management at Quintiles. He also has held clinical posts at Bayer.

• Cincinnati-based CRO Kendle appointed Thomas Smith, M.D., to vice president of medical affairs. He will lead the company’s global medical affairs organization in charge of the group’s medical directors who advise clients on protocol design, endpoint selection and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Smith was most recently a global medical director in that group. Prior to joining Kendle, he held various positions at Akros Pharma, Genzyme and Abbott.

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