President Joe Biden has nominated journalist, author, and surgeon Atul Gawande as assistant administrator of the Bureau for Global Health, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Reuters reports.

Gawande, known for books such as Complications, Better, and Being Mortal, has experience working in the federal government. He was a senior advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Bill Clinton administration and was a member of Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, the task force that advised Biden on the pandemic while he was president-elect.

“I’m honored to be nominated to lead global health development at @USAID, including for COVID,” Gawande wrote on Twitter. “With more COVID deaths worldwide in the first half of 2021 than in all of 2020, I’m grateful for the chance to help end this crisis and to re-strengthen public health systems worldwide.”

Gawande began his career as a journalist while a resident at Harvard Medical School, working as a staff writer for the New Yorker. His articles for the magazine and for Slate formed the basis for his first book, Complications, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

His most recent book, Being Mortal, was published in 2014. A reviewer for Kirkus praised the book as “a sensitive, intelligent, and heartfelt examination of the processes of aging and dying.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.