Elias A. Zerhouni (Arabic: إلياس زرهوني) M.D. (born 12 April1951) is the 15th and current director of the National Institutes of Health, appointed by George W. Bush in May 2002. On September 24, 2008 he announced that he will step down as NIH Director at the end of October 2008.
His accomplishments at the NIH have included the establishment of a research program into the problem of widespread obesity, and supporting the reduction of healthcare disparities. In April 2006, he told a Congressional subcommittee, "We can now clearly envision an era when the treatment paradigm of medicine will increasingly become more predictive, personalized and preemptive. We will strike disease before it strikes us with the hope of greatly reducing overall costs to society."
A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Zerhouni is of Algerian descent. He was born in Nedroma in Tlemcen Province, a small city near the western border of Algeria with Morocco. He came to the United States at age 24, having earned his medical degree at the University of Algiers School of Medicine in 1975. After completing his residency in diagnostic radiology at Johns Hopkins in 1978 as chief resident, he served as assistant professor in 1979 and associate professor in 1985. Between 1981 and 1985, he was in the department of radiology at Eastern Virginia Medical School and its affiliated DePaul Hospital. In 1988, Dr. Zerhouni returned to Johns Hopkins where he was appointed director of the MRI division, and then was appointed full professor in 1992, becoming the chairman of the radiology department in January 1996.
