Jay Bhattacharya

Jayanta Bhattacharya (born 1968) is an American physician-scientist and health economist who has served as the 18th Director of the National Institutes of Health since 2025. Bhattacharya was a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University until March 2025 when he left his position at Stanford and became an emeritus professor so that he could start his position at the NIH. He was an investigator at Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research focused on the economics of health care. In November 2024, President-elect Donald Trump named Bhattacharya as his choice to lead the National Institutes of Health, and he was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 25, 2025.

Jay Bhattacharya is the first Indian American to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya opposed the lockdowns and mask mandates imposed in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, he was a co-author in 2020 of the Great Barrington Declaration. Provided by Wikipedia