Sandeep Patel, the first Director of BARDA’s new Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe), oversees a diverse portfolio of health security innovations to address current and emerging threats. He is an entrepreneur and restless innovator who uses his experience to advance high impact science, build new products, and launch new programs and initiatives that focus on health and wellness. Sandeep’s experiences highlight his commitment to public service as evidenced in his prior roles in the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where he focused on advancing innovative policies and funding solutions to complex, long-standing health-related problems. He co-founded and led a new $35M+ public-private partnership, KidneyX, that advanced development and lowered the commercialization risks of breakthrough therapies for kidney disease, notably an implantable artificial kidney to displace dialysis. He spearheaded the Advancing American Kidney Health Initiative, which is reforming the nation’s organ transplant system, getting more patients off of dialysis, and incentivizing a focus to prevent kidney failure. And he built a $50M program scaling the use of incentive prizes and crowdsourcing as 21st century problem-solving tools across the family of HHS agencies.
Sandeep is a nanotechnologist by training and has built his career around understanding and guiding scientific and technological insights to building products and services that ultimately improve lives on a global scale. Previously he has served in a number of science policy roles, including as a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences and as a scientific consultant for Thomson Reuters. He is the recipient of the American Society of Nephrology’s President’s Medal, honoring those who have transformed kidney care, for which he was also awarded a Secretary’s Distinguished Service award. He founded a company in Uganda focused on rapid design and development of novel products for agriculture and health using portable 3D printing services. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BA in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis.