Along with his spouse — Nadia Abougad once they married — he’s survived by a daughter, Yasmin; a son, Samy; and two sisters, Dorreya and Safa.
Dr. Zaki graduated second in his class of 800 from the Alexandria Medical College in Egypt in 1978. However he was much less enthusiastic about training drugs than in unraveling mysteries, which had been an obsession of his ever since he was captivated by the novels of the British writer Enid Blyton as a baby.
That obsession was on the coronary heart of his work on the C.D.C. “We go into the fundamentals of how a illness occurs, the mechanism,” he mentioned in an interview with Stat, a medical web site, in 2016. “Placing items collectively. Fixing puzzles.”
Dr. Zaki earned a grasp’s in pathology from Alexandria College. However since autopsies weren’t permitted in Egypt for spiritual causes, he did his residency in anatomic pathology at Emory College in Atlanta, the place he additionally obtained a doctorate in experimental pathology.
He then went to work on the C.D.C. and have become a naturalized American citizen.
Described by James LeDuc, a former colleague, as “form of the key weapon for lots of what was achieved at C.D.C. on rising ailments,” Dr. Zaki was awarded the Division of Well being and Human Providers Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, the division’s highest honor, 9 occasions.
“What distinguished him as a researcher was creativity, collaboration, strong scientific methodology and a broad information base.,” Dr. Inger Okay. Damon, of the C.D.C.’s Nationwide Middle for Rising and Zoonotic Infectious Illnesses, mentioned in an e-mail.
Dr. Zaki had no illusions that his work would ever be completed.
“We expect we all know all the pieces,” he informed The New York Instances in 2007, “however we don’t know the tip of the iceberg.”
“There are such a lot of viruses and micro organism we don’t know something about, that we don’t have exams for,” he added. “100 years from now, individuals is not going to consider the variety of pathogens we didn’t even know existed.”