President elect Donald Trump nominated health policy researcher Jay Bhattacharya to head the US National Institutes of Health, the sprawling agency that oversees close to $50 billion in biomedical research spending.

President-elect Trump selected a critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates to lead the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is known for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 manifesto that advocated allowing COVID to spread in order to achieve herd immunity.

The Stanford professor was appointed Tuesday to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya has previously made controversial critiques of lockdowns and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.