NIH director exits
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
Elias Zerhouni will step down as director of the National Institutes of Health at the end of October, citing plans for "new opportunities, including several writing projects." Zerhouni, who was appointed to lead the 27-institute agency in 2002, is perhaps best known for two initiatives: the so-called NIH Roadmap, launched in 2003 to accelerate broad-reaching research projects that did not fit within the constructs of any single institute, and sweeping ethics reforms in 2005 that restricted NIH staffers from consulting with device and drug firms outside of formal government collaboration agreements. A trained radiologist, Zerhouni also used his stint at NIH to spotlight the benefits of medical imaging (1"The Gray Sheet" Feb. 6, 2006, p. 6)