Rajesh Gupta

About Rajesh Gupta

Rajesh Gupta, MD, MS, MPH, is currently the Deputy Director of Tuberculosis (TB) Drugs and Diagnostics R&D at the Gates Foundation where he leads a portfolio of investments working toward a 2045 vision of enabling TB elimination through single-encounter cures. In addition, he is advising multiple companies and organizations across health technologies.  

Dr. Gupta has spent nearly 20 years in infectious diseases working at the intersection of product development, program implementation and health policy. He began his career delivering TB and HIV care in low-resource settings with Partners In Health, work that continues to shape his equity-forward approach to R&D. He went on to lead WHO's MDR-TB program, co-authoring the organization's first evidence-based MDR-TB policy guidelines, and served in the Office of the Director General where he helped design the WHO initiative that scaled HIV treatment in low and middle-income countries from 50,000 to nearly three million people. He helped establish Google.org's pandemic preparedness viral surveillance portfolio, lead Otsuka's TB programs through delamanid's approval for treating MDR-TB and global access, and create Vir Biotechnology's global health and pandemic preparedness strategy — serving on the development team behind sotrovimab's emergency use authorization to treat COVID-19 and raising over $250M in non-dilutive and equity financing. Most recently, he was Chief Operating Officer at an infectious diseases startup focusing on respiratory viral diseases. Rajesh has held faculty positions at Stanford Medical School and Harvard Medical School, and has authored over 50 publications.

Rajesh was born in New York City to parents who emigrated from India. They are now naturalized citizens and live in Georgia.

Rajesh received his MD and MS from Stanford University, his MPH from Yale University, and his BS and BA from Tulane University.

Rajesh resides in Berkeley, CA, with his spouse and their daughter.

He is thankful for the fellowship, which allows him to pursue a varied and fruitful career path.