Former NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni gives remarks at June 4 SMRB meeting in Bldg. 1.

Nearly 5 years removed from his NIH directorship, Dr. Elias Zerhouni returned to campus June 4 to offer his views about how to value NIH research economically in an era of flat federal research budgets. His remarks at the end of a day-long meeting on that topic, conducted by the scientific review management board (SMRB), included vintage observations from the veteran of academia (Johns Hopkins), government (he was NIH director from 2002 to 2008) and industry (he is president of global research and development at French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi). For example, his comment that “it’s not very smart to go to the grocery store in an F-16 [fighter jet] when you can go on…