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City Club of Cleveland - Francis S. Collins, MD
 
 
 
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. is the current director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

Dr. Collins led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project (HGP), a complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. On Nov. 5, 2007, Collins received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil award, for his revolutionary contributions to genetic research.

Dr. Collins received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and an 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 has led to the identification of genetic variants associated with type 2 diabetes and the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.
November 11, 2011