Dr. Francis Collins
*Dr. Francis Collins of N.I.H. was born on this date in 1950. He is a white-American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with several diseases and led the Human Genome Project.
He is the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. 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. Collins is the spearhead working on a genetic cure for Sickle Cell Anemia, a disease that disproportionately kills African Americans and Africans.
