Washington

The US Senate has confirmed radiologist Elias Zerhouni as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), filling a 28-month void at the helm of the world's largest biomedical research agency.

Zerhouni, who was born and medically trained in Algeria, will arrive at the NIH from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was vice-dean for research. The Senate confirmed Zerhouni on 3 May, just three days after a smooth confirmation hearing at which he stressed the importance of multidisciplinary science, the translation of basic research into medicine, and better access to new technologies for researchers.

He tactfully told senators that he would support whatever decision the Congress comes up with on the issue of therapeutic cloning (see page 103). He said that he backed President Bush's decision to use federal funds for research only on stem-cell lines that already exist, adding that if researchers needed more of them, he would “be the first to assemble that information” for consideration by policy-makers.

Zerhouni also got firmly behind the creation of the Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the NIH — a development that was instigated by Congress but opposed by Harold Varmus, the NIH's previous permanent director.

A healthy backlog of work awaits Zerhouni at his new office in Bethesda, Maryland. Since Varmus left, the NIH has lost several institute directors, and Tommy Thompson, the health secretary, has moved aggressively to centralize some of the agency's functions at his own office in Washington DC. “The most important role of a director right now is to re-establish morale and momentum,” Zerhouni told the senators, “and to make the agency even more effective than it has been.”