The US Senate confirmed the appointment of Indian-origin scientist Jay Bhattacharya as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

According to the official website of the US Senate, he was confirmed by a 53-47 vote on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump nominated Bhattacharya as the 18th NIH Director in November last year.

Mr Bhattacharya is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His peer-reviewed research has been published in Economics, Statistics, Legal, Medical, Public Health, and Health Policy Journals. He holds an MD and PhD in Economics from Stanford University.