Director of Global Health Delivery, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense, White House Homeland Security Council

Rajeev Venkayya is the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense at the White House Homeland Security Council. Appointed by President Bush in May 2005, he directs the development of policies to prevent, protect, and respond to bioterrorism and naturally occurring biological threats such as avian influenza and SARS, as well as the medical consequences of weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Venkayya simultaneously holds a position with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is board certified and licensed to practice Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Medicine, and Critical Care Medicine, and he returns to UCSF annually as an attending physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at San Francisco General Hospital and the Pulmonary Consult Service.

Dr. Venkayya was a Director for Biodefense and Health at the White House Homeland Security Council from October 2003 to May 2005, and he played a significant role in the development of U.S. government policies in biosecurity, biosurveillance, public health and medical preparedness, and the National Biodefense Strategy.
Prior to his positions at the Homeland Security Council, Dr. Venkayya was one of thirteen individuals appointed by President Bush to the non-partisan White House Fellowship program from 2002-2003. As a White House Fellow, he worked with Secretary Spencer Abraham at the Department of Energy as an advisor on science and technology, and he interacted with leaders across government and the public and private sectors.

Before to coming to Washington, Dr. Venkayya was an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCSF. He held his primary appointment at San Francisco General Hospital, where he was Co-Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit, Founder and Director of the High-Risk Asthma Clinic, and the recipient of a five-year research award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the biological basis of asthma.

Dr. Venkayya founded two companies while at UCSF: Sapient Medical Group, Inc., a physician services corporation, and Neomedicus, LLC, a medical technology consulting and design firm. Through Neomedicus, he created "What's Asthma All About?" a web-based movie that has been used for asthma education by hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.

Dr. Venkayya completed his fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCSF. He was a resident and Chief Medical Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He completed his undergraduate and medical school education in the 6 year BS/MD program at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honorary medical society. He is an Eagle Scout.