Francis S. Collins

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He was named a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum in 2008.

He is a scientist renowned for his contributions to finding the genetic basis of disease, including identifying the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease, and for his leadership of the Human Genome Project, which successfully completed a mapping and sequencing of the human genome sequence in 2000. In addition to his duties at NHGRI, he is Senior Investigator at the Genome Technology Branch and Head of the Molecular Genetics Section.

Dr. Collins was raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He did undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Virginia and took his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University and his M.D. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Before joining the Human Genome Project in 1993, Dr. Collins held posts at the North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Yale University, and the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

Among his books are Principles of Medical Genetics (1998) and The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006).

(Dr. Collins takes on the role of Senior Fellow in a private capacity.)