A graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Management, Vivek Murthy MD ’03 SOM ’03 was nominated as Surgeon General on Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, he will succeed acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak.

An advocate of Obama’s signature health care law before it passed the House and Senate, Murthy is currently a doctor at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and teaches at Harvard Medical School.

Only 36 years old, he helped found and then served as president of Visions– a nonprofit group that addresses HIV/AIDS education issues—all while he was in college.

The position of surgeon general was created in 1871 by President Ulysses S. Grant.