Jay Bhattacharya

February 19, 2026 1:37 PM

Indian American physician-economist appointed acting head of Centres for Disease Control

Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is taking over the leadership of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the acting director of the world’s premier medical research organisation. Bhattacharya, who now heads the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will simultaneously hold the CDC position, he told NBC News, confirming several earlier news reports. He steps into the CDC, which, like the rest of the federal health establishment, has been enmeshed in controversies u...

March 26, 2025 9:18 AM

US Senate confirms Jay Bhattacharya as Director of National Institutes of Health

The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed the appointment of Indian-origin Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford School of Medicine, as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to the official website of the US Senate, Bhattacharya won the vote 53-47 during the first session of the roll call vote in the 119th Congress. An earlier nomination statement from former US President Donald Trump described Bhattacharya as a professor of health policy at Stanford University, a res...

November 27, 2024 10:24 AM

Trump chooses US COVID policy critic Bhattacharya to lead NIH

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday chose Stanford academic and U.S. COVID policy critic Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health, the country's top public funder of medical research with a budget of some $47.3 billion The NIH has been in the crosshairs of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. The NIH director oversees 27 institutes and centers that conduct early stage research on everything from va...