Jay Bhattacharya

Jay Bhattacharya is an American physician-scientist and health economist who began serving as the 18th Director of the National Institutes of Health in April 2025, following a distinguished academic career at Stanford University where he held professorships in medicine, economics, and health policy and directed the Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. He co-authored the controversial Great Barrington Declaration advocating “focused protection” during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has a dual M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford and extensive research focused on the health of vulnerable populations, biomedical innovation, and the economic impact of public health policies.