This week, President Obama announced his nominee to be the new Director of NIH, Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Collins, a geneticist, was Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993 to 2008. He is credited with leading the institute's Human Genome Project, which successfully mapped and sequenced human DNA, culminating with the publishing of the finished human DNA sequence in 2003. Dr. Collins is also known for discovering the genes of numerous diseases, including cystic fibrosis.

The President said of Dr. Collins, "My administration is committed to promoting scientific integrity and pioneering scientific research, and I am confident that Dr. Francis Collins will lead the NIH to achieve these goals. Dr. Collins is one of the top scientists in the world, and his groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease."

Prior to moving to the NIH in 1993, Dr. Collins was a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Michigan. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, 2007. Collins holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and an M.D. from the University of North Carolina.