Jay Bhattacharya, prominent physician and economist, nominated by Trump for NIH director

Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, writing: "I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bhattacharya will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct the Nation's Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives."

The NIH also awards funding grants to hundreds of thousands of researchers, oversees clinical trials on its Maryland campus and supports a variety of efforts to develop drugs and therapeutics.

The nominee for the NIH director must be confirmed by the Senate, which will have a Republican majority beginning in January.

Bhattacharya has called for moving the NIH's focus toward funding more innovative research and cutting the influence of some of its longest-serving officials.

Kennedy Jr. has played a central role in choosing top health care staff and deputies for Trump's next administration, including Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary, who Trump selected to lead the Food and Drug Administration, and internal medicine physician and former Republican congressman from Florida Dave Weldon, who Trump chose to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the report.

Bhattacharya and Makary worked together on a blueprint for a proposed commission to investigate the nation's coronavirus response, the report noted.

Trump's selections of Makary, Weldon and family and emergency medicine physician Janette Nesheiwat, who the president-elect nominated to serve as surgeon general, also must be confirmed by the Senate.

Bhattacharya has also called for rolling back the power of some of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the NIH, arguing that some career civil servants wrongly shaped national policies at the height of the pandemic and did not allow dissenting perspectives.

He, along with other critics of the agency, have criticized former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, who helped shape the nation's coronavirus response during the Trump and Biden administrations before leaving the federal government in December 2022.

The NIH has also been investigated by congressional lawmakers over the pandemic response, with Republicans charging that the agency's leaders mismanaged the response to the virus and calling for the agency to be overhauled.

Current and former NIH officials, including Fauci, have defended the agency's response, arguing that federal leaders generally did the best that they could to address the virus.