Claiming that Fayad was a personal friend of hers, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ignored her own government's boycott of the Hamas government to meet with Fayad when he visited Washington in the spring.
To improve the MRI's ability to spot the most inflamed plaque, Fayad (like many others) is trying to develop nanoparticles that would be injected into patients and would lodge in fat-laden cells in the artery walls.