Elias Zerhouni is resigning from his position as director of the National Institutes of Health at the end of October "to pursue writing projects and explore other professional opportunities." Zerhouni said that his writing plans may touch on his experiences as head of NIH during “a time of real transition.”
Zerhouni told a group of reporters in a conference call this week that his departure is timed to synchronize with the end of the current White House administration and that he does not consider the move to be a resignation.
He added that he expects that Raynard Kington, deputy director of NIH, will serve as acting director until a new White House names his successor.
Zerhouni was appointed to the directorship of NIH in 2002 by President George W. Bush, and he has since that time overseen both rapid growth in the size of the institute and the breadth of its efforts.
Zerhouni said his only regret about his time as NIH director was that he served during circumstances including “budget challenges and war.”
Jonathan Usuka has joined Accelrys as senior director of life sciences industry marketing.
Jonathan joins Accelrys from Hoffmann-LaRoche, where he directed business strategy in research informatics.
Before joining Roche, Jonathan was CEO of a custom bioinformatics solutions company, which he sold in 2001.
He earned a PhD in chemistry from Stanford University, where he did molecular dynamics simulations, and was an NIH fellow in Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine.