The NIH Director
Biography of Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.
Jayanta "Jay" Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., took the helm as 18th director of the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s medical research agency, on April 1, 2025. President Trump nominated Dr. Bhattacharya for the position on Nov. 26, 2024, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him on March 25, 2025.
Dr. Bhattacharya, a renowned doctor, researcher, health economist, previously held a tenured professorship in the medical school at Stanford University in California. His research focused on population aging and chronic disease, particularly on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. He has published over 170 research papers in peer-reviewed journals in medicine, epidemiology, health policy, economics, statistics, science policy, and public health, as well as a leading textbook on health economics.
During the pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for opening schools and lifting lockdowns while better protecting older populations who were most vulnerable to the disease.
Dr. Bhattacharya held numerous additional appointments at Stanford University, including courtesy appointments at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and Economics department. Previously, he conducted research at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the SPHERE Institute, a policy research firm. Before joining Stanford, he was an economist at the RAND Corporation and worked as a visiting economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Bhattacharya is a longtime NIH grantee and has served as a standing member of multiple NIH review committees. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Stanford University. He then completed medical school and earned a Ph.D. in economics also from Stanford University.
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