NIH Director Fireside Chat

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University on Wednesday (Feb. 18) will welcome Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, for a fireside chat presented in conjunction with the university’s yearlong America250 celebration.

Christopher Yeomans, the Justin S. Morrill Dean of Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts, will moderate the talk with Bhattacharya, who took the helm as 18th director of the federal agency in April. Titled “Liberty as an Engine for Science,” the discussion is at 2-2:50 p.m. Wednesday in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. The talk is free and open to the public.

Purdue students who attend the Bhattacharya event, because of its connection with the Purdue America250 celebration, will be eligible to receive an event activity credit for their Cornerstone class and university Civics Literacy requirements.

Bhattacharya, a renowned medical doctor, researcher and health economist, was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the NIH and confirmed by the U.S. Senate last March.

The NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.

Bhattacharya, who’s known as “Dr. Jay,” 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.

Before joining Stanford, he was an economist at RAND and worked as a visiting economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Bhattacharya earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Stanford. He then completed medical school and earned a PhD in economics, also from Stanford.

In December, Yeomans was selected as Purdue’s new CLA dean. He had served as head of Purdue’s Department of Philosophy since 2017 and as a faculty member since 2009.

The fireside chat with Bhattacharya will be the first of three Purdue campus events this month focused on the essential role of free inquiry in society.

In conjunction with Purdue’s America250 celebration, bestselling writer, documentarian and television producer Timothy Ferris will join President Mung Chiang for a Presidential Lecture Series conversation focused on the pivotal role of science in advancing democracy and economic development. That event, titled “The Science of Liberty: How Liberalism Arose From Science and Sparks Prosperity,” is at 6 p.m. Feb. 26 in Fowler Hall. It also is free and open to the public with a ticket.

And Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, is guest speaker for the Institute for Civic Thought at Purdue’s Cornerstone program, also on Feb. 26, discussing the subject of free thought and inquiry in the field of science.  

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 106,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 57,000 at our main campus locations in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 14 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its integrated, comprehensive Indianapolis urban expansion; the Mitch Daniels School of Business; Purdue Computes; and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.