Elias Zerhouni *04
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Elias Zerhouni
Elias A. Zerhouni,
M.D. (b.
12 April 1951) is the 15th and current director of the
National Institutes of Health, appointed by
George W. Bush in May 2002. 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."
Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Zerhouni served as executive vice-dean of
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, chair of the Russell H. Morgan department of
radiology and
radiological science, and
Martin Donner professor of radiology, and professor of
biomedical engineering. Before that, he was vice dean for research at Johns Hopkins.
A resident of
Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Zerhouni is actually North African, having been born in
Nedroma, a small mountain village on the western border of
Algeria. 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.
In 1985, he was a consultant to the
White House under President
Ronald Reagan. In 1988, he was a consultant to the
World Health Organization. Since 2000, he has been a member of the
National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. He had served on the
National Cancer Institute's Board of Scientific Advisors from 1998-2002.
He has won several awards for his research including a Gold Medal from the
American Roentgen Ray Society for
CT research and two
Paul Lauterbur Awards for MRI research. His research in imaging led to advances in
Computed tomography (CAT scanning) and
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that resulted in 157
peer reviewed publications and 8
patents.
Dr. Zerhouni received the honorary title
Doctor Emeritus from the University of Algiers in 2005.