Elias Zerhouni

Radiologist Elias Zerhouni, born in 1951 in Nedroma, Algeria served as the fifteenth director of the National Institutes of Health, the country's leading biomedical research agency, from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, Zerhouni crafted the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, a $2 billion five-year plan to invigorate research by focusing on bioinformatics systems and structural biology, genomic database establishment and nano-medicine projects. Currently, he serves as president of global research and development at the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. Updated 2010