Born 14 Apr 1950.

Francis Sellers Collins is an #American #geneticist and #physician who became the second #director (1993-2008), taking over from James Watson, at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (#NIH), an agency of the U.S. government. 

On 8 Jul 2009, he was nominated by President Obama to be head of the NIH. He was awarded the #NationalMedalofScience at a ceremony at the #WhiteHouse (7 Oct 2009).

Collins began his early career with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, but recognizing the nacent field of molecular biology and genetics, he changed his field, and earned an M.D. (1977). Thereafter, he worked on methods of crossing large stretches of #DNA to identify #disease #genes, for which he later coined the term #positionalcloning. His research team used it to identify the gene for #CysticFibrosis (1989) and for #Huntington disease (1993).

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