Indian-American Jay Bhattacharya Named 18th Director of NIH.

Appointment

In March 2025, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian-origin professor at Stanford School of Medicine, was confirmed as the 18th Director of Maryland (the United States of America, USA)-based National Institutes of Health (NIH) by the United States (US) Senate.


      - The appointment followed a 53-47 roll-call vote during the first session of the 119th Congress. He succeeded Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, whose tenure concluded on 17 January 2025.

     

     

Main Point :-   (i) Dr. Bhattacharya serves as a professor of health policy at Stanford University and holds multiple affiliations, including research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Hoover Institution.

      (ii) He directs Stanford's Centre for Demography and the Economics of Health and Ageing (CDEHA), focusing on critical areas such as government health programs, biomedical innovation, and economic policies.

(iii) Notably, Dr. Bhattacharya co-authored the 'Great Barrington Declaration' in October 2020, advocating for targeted protections as an alternative to widespread lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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