Elias Zerhouni (in Arabic إلياس زرهوني) (born April 12, 1951) is an Algerian-born American scientist, radiologist, biomedical engineer, entrepreneur, and pharmaceutical industry executive, known for having been the 15th Director of the National Institutes of Health.

He spent much of his career on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, serving as an executive vice dean from 1996 to 2002.

[1] In 2009, under the Obama administration he served as one of the country's first presidential science envoys to foster scientific and technologic collaboration with other nations.

[4] In October 2020 Zerhouni co-founded ModeX Therapeutics, a privately held biotechnology company focused on developing multi-specific immune therapies for cancer and infectious diseases.

In 1985, Zerhouni returned to Johns Hopkins as co-director of body CT and MRI and was promoted to associate professor.

His other ventures included Biopsys Medical (Zerhouni envisioned and co-invented an image-guided, less-invasive breast biopsy method to diagnose breast cancer), which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1997,[9] and American Radiology Services, an expansion of Johns Hopkins outpatient radiology.

[13] In 2008, at the Élysée Palace, French President Nicholas Sarkozy awarded Zerhouni the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit.

[15] During his tenure, he led the transformation of the R&D organization, resulting in marked improvement of R&D productivity, and presided over 30 programs – 11 of which received regulatory approvals and launched commercially, including the blockbuster drug Dupixent.

[5] For viral diseases, the lead targets of a broad multi-specific antibody portfolio include HIV and SARS-CoV-2, and a vaccine for Epstein-Barr virus is also in development.

In 2025, ModeX announced dosing of the first participant in the Phase I study of an EBV vaccine candidate being developed in collaboration with Merck & Co. Zerhouni served on the board of trustees of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.