Francis Collins

Francis Collins
Francis Collins
Science Advisor to the President
	Acting
	Assumed office ; February 18, 2022
President	Joe Biden
Preceded by	Eric Lander
Succeeded by	Arati Prabhakar (designate)
16th Director of the National Institutes of Health
	In office; August 17, 2009 – December 19, 2021
President	Barack Obama; Donald Trump; Joe Biden
Deputy	Lawrence A. Tabak
Preceded by	Raynard S. Kington (Acting)
Succeeded by	Lawrence A. Tabak (Acting)
2nd Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute
	In office; April 1993 – August 1, 2008
President	Bill Clinton; George W. Bush
Preceded by	Michael Gottesman (Acting)
Succeeded by	Alan Guttmacher (Acting)
Personal details
Born	Francis Sellers Collins; April 14, 1950 (age 72); Staunton, Virginia, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Diane Baker
Education	University of Virginia (BS); Yale University (MS, PhD); University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (MD)
	Scientific career
Fields	Molecular genetics
Institutions	University of Michigan; National Human Genome Research Institute; National Institutes of Health;
Thesis	Semiclassical theory of vibrationally inelastic scattering, with application to H+ + H₂ (1974)
Doctoral advisor	James Cross

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist. He is known for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. He was the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland from 2009 until 2021.^[1] In 2022, Collins became the Acting Science Advisor to the President during the Joe Biden administration.

Before being appointed director of the NIH, Collins led the Human Genome Project and other genomics research initiatives as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the 27 institutes and centers at NIH.

Before joining NHGRI, he earned a reputation as a gene hunter at the University of Michigan. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.