Dr. Francis Collins was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as the new director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday.
"Dr. Collins is one of our generation's great scientific leaders. A physician and geneticist, Dr. Collins served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he led the Human Genome Project to completion," Sebelius said in a news release. "Dr. Collins will be an outstanding leader. Today is an exciting day for NIH and for science in this country."
Collins is known for his landmark discovery of disease genes and was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993-2008.