AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Francis Collins, Ph.D., is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. He oversees a fifteen year project directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human genes. He received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale, and a M.D. from the University of North Carolina. Following a fellowship in Human Genetics at Yale, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he remained until moving to NIH in 1993. His research led to the identification of genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington's disease. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.