WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Dr. Francis Collins — a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project — as director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Dr. Collins is one of our generation’s great scientific leaders,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a written statement. “A physician and geneticist, Dr. Collins served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he led the Human Genome Project to completion.”
Collins directed the genome research institute, which is part of the the National Institutes of Health (NIH), from 1993 to 2008. The Human Genome Project, an international project, was completed in April 2003 with a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.
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Collins’ research laboratory discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington’s disease, a familial endocrine cancer syndrome, and most recently, genes for adult onset (type 2) diabetes and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.
He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia, a doctorate in physical chemistry from Yale University, and an MD with honors from the University of North Carolina.
Prior to the NIH, Collins spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007.
