Zerhouni Joins Gates Foundation

Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health during the Bush Administration, has joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a senior fellow. Zerhouni, a world-class radiology researcher, will advise the foundation on its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, in which the foundation works to identify the top scientific challenges in global health. One aspect of the effort is the foundation’s support for far-out ideas that are still too unproven to win traditional federal NIH grants.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.