Emer Cooke has been the Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, based in Amsterdam, since November 2020. She served as Chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) for five years, from the beginning of her EMA mandate until the end of October 2025.

Between November 2016 and November 2020, she was the Director responsible for all medical product related regulatory activities at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Ms Cooke is a pharmacist with Master’s degrees in Science and Business Administration from Trinity College Dublin. She has over 30 years’ experience in international regulatory affairs and held management positions at the EMA as Head of Inspections and Head of International Affairs respectively from 2002 until 2016.

Between 1998 and 2002 she worked in the Pharmaceuticals unit of the European Commission, where intra-alia, she was responsible for international collaboration, EU enlargement and the orphan medicines regulation. Prior to this, Ms Cooke worked at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical industries and Associations (EFPIA) (1992–1998), in the Czech Republic as an independent pharmaceutical policy advisor (1996–1998) and in the Irish pharmaceutical sector (1985–1990).

Starting her mandate as EMA’s Executive Director in November 2020 amid a public health crisis of unprecedented scale she announced “My number one priority will be to drive forward EMA’s response to the pandemic and the work already ongoing to support the development and approval of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.” Doing precisely that, has earned her various awards including the ‘European of the Year 2022’ award by European Movement Ireland and Honorary Doctorates in Science (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – 2023 and National University of Ireland - 2025).