DNDi is very pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Balram Bhargava as a member of the organization’s Board of Directors.

Professor Bhargava is the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Secretary of India’s Department of Health Research. He also serves as the Executive Director for the Stanford India Biodesign Centre, School of International Biodesign (SiB), an interdisciplinary fellowship programme which was established to foster innovation in low-cost medical devices.

Professor of Cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS), he comes to DNDi with a wealth of expertise in the fields of biomedical innovation, public health, medical education, and medical research. Professor Bhargava’s commitment to increasing access to health is well established. He is the founder of the Society for Less Investigative Medicine (SLIM), the c-GMP Centre for Excellence for Stem Cell Studies at AIIMS, which has initiated the treatment of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy.

He has also pioneered the development of indigenous low-cost coronary stents and is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal Innovations (BMJi).

In 2014, Professor Bhargava was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government for his contributions to medicine. He is also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Platinum Jubilee Award, the Tata Innovation Fellowship and the Vasvik Award for Biomedical Technology Innovation, among others.