♦ US President-elect Donald Trump named Indian-American Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This institute is the country’s top public funder of medical research with a budget of $47.3 billion. 

♦ The NIH director oversees 27 institutes and centers that conduct early stage research on everything from vaccines for emerging pandemic threats to targets for new drugs.

♦ Jay Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata in 1968. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997 and received his doctorate from Stanford’s Department of Economics in 2000.

♦ He currently serves as a professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and directs the university’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.