Dr Deshpande was born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, USA and did his undergraduate and Masters in Anthropology at Stanford. He trained in medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, and completed Internal Medicine training at UC San Diego in California, before joining the faculty at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. He moved to Japan in 2009 as the staff physician for the American Embassy, as well as a staff physician in the Department of General Medicine at St. Luke`s International Hospital. Gautam was the founding Vice Dean of St. Luke's Graduate School of Public Health until 2019, and now holds an appointment as Professor of Medicine at Juntendo University School of Medicine. Dr Deshpande took time out from his busy schedule to talk to us about the upcoming coronavirus vaccination role out.