Dr. Krishna Udayakumar leads multiple organizations and programs across the fields of health innovation, health policy, and global health. He is the founding Director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, focused on generating deeper evidence and support for the study, scaling, and adaptation of health innovations and policy reforms globally. He is also Executive Director of Innovations in Healthcare, a non-profit co-founded by Duke, McKinsey & Company, and the World Economic Forum to curate and scale the impact of transformative health solutions globally. 

At Duke University, Dr. Udayakumar holds the rank of Professor of Global Health and holds a secondary faculty appointment in Medicine. He is also a core faculty member of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy. 

Dr. Udayakumar chairs Duke University’s Global Priorities Committee. His work has been published in leading academic journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and Academic Medicine, and he has been interviewed or quoted in media outlets around the world, including CNN, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico. 

Born in Bangalore, India, Dr. Udayakumar spent his childhood in Virginia and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction in interdisciplinary studies. He received both an MD and an MBA (with a concentration in Health Sector Management) from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar. Krishna completed his residency in internal medicine at Duke and served as Assistant Chief Resident at the Durham VA Medical Center before joining the faculty of Duke University.