Elias Zerhouni, the director of the National Institutes of Health, is expected to announce his departure Wednesday. President Bush picked him in March 2002, and he is regarded by some experts as the administration's most successful administrator.
He managed to impose a management reform on the notoriously disorganized NIH, and successfully navigated the hot-button dispute over abortion embryo stem-cell research, even as his budget shrank slightly.
There's no word yet on where Zerhouni will go, but it's expected that he will find a top science-management position in academia, business or the universe of non-government organizations.