Biogen shareholders voted to add biotech executive Susan Langer, who is the romantic partner of departing director Alex Denner, to its board of directors on Monday, concluding a weekslong episode that led some investors to question the company's leadership. Langer, 32, will join the eight-member board for a one-year term. Denner, who nominated her, did not stand for reelection.

The results of Monday's shareholder vote remain preliminary, and Biogen said it will disclose the final tally within four business days. Langer serves as president of Souffle Therapeutics, a privately held biotech firm. She previously held executive roles at Kojin Therapeutics and Paratus Sciences.

Langer graduated from Cornell University in 2013 and began her career at Biogen in business development immediately afterward, getting promoted seven times in seven years before leaving the company as head of corporate strategy in 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile. Langer has never before served on the board of a publicly traded company and will be Biogen's youngest director by more than two decades. Her father is the famed biotech inventor and billionaire Bob Langer, a decorated Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who has cofounded more than three dozen companies, including Moderna.

An attorney representing Langer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Denner, 53, joined Biogen's board in 2009 as a representative of the activist investor Carl Icahn, who was agitating for the company to sell itself.