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AAIF honors Arab American Doctor for Public Service

By AAI
AAI
Posted on Friday April 17, 2009

The Arab American Institute Foundation will honor Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni with the Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service at the 11th annual Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, last year’s recipient of the Halaby Award, will present the award to the doctor during the Gibran Gala this Thursday, April 24.

Dr. Zerhouni, who came to the United States from Algeria at the age of 24, has become a world-renowned leader in radiology research. He served as director of the National Institutes of Health from 2002 until 2008, and led the agency through a challenging period that required innovative solutions to transform basic and clinical research into tangible benefits for patients and their families. One of the hallmarks of his tenure is the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, which brought together all of the NIH 27 Institutes and Centers to fund compelling research initiatives that could have a major impact on science, but that no single institute could tackle alone. Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Zerhouni was a consultant to the White House under President Ronald Reagan and in 1988 to the World Health Organization.

Since 2000, Dr. Zerhouni has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and served on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors from 1998-2002. After leaving the NIH, he joined the board of trustees for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) which is slated to open in the fall of 2009.