With Vas Narasimhan being named as the global chief executive of Swiss pharma giant Novartis recently, here's all that you need to know about the doctor-turned-CEO.- Assuming the duties of CEO from February next year, Narasimhan is presently the global head of drug development and chief medical officer at Novartis.- He studied medicine from Harvard Medical School and is a second-generation immigrant in the US. His parents moved there from Tamil Nadu in the 1970s.- At 41, Narasimhan is the youngest among a group of new chieftains at global pharmaceutical companies.- Emma Walmsley, 48, in April took the helm at London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc , becoming the only woman to run one of the world's largest drugmakers.- It was during his tenure as head of drug development that Novartis's breakthrough CAR-T therapy, a cell immunotherapy for cancer, was developed.- Narasimhan fol lows other Indians like Udit Batra , who serves on the executive board of German drugmaker Merck and Ameet Nathwani, a British citizen of Indian origin, who is executive vice-president of medical affairs at Sanofi.- Narasimhan replaces incumbent Joseph Jimenez, who told Bloomberg that his children have grown up and moved back to California, prompting his decision to follow them. "I've been CEO for eight years and I've been pretty public about the fact that I didn't think a CEO should stay much longer than that," Jimenez said. "You come in, you see what you want to change, you change it, and then it's time to pass it on to a successor.".