Obama taps UVA alum Collins to run NIH
President Obama announced July 8 he's chosen famed geneticist, UVA alum, and Staunton native Dr. Francis Collins to be his director for the National Institutes of Health. "Dr. Collins is one of the top scientists in the world," the president said of Collins in a statement, "and his groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease." Collins is most famous for decoding the human genome in 2000. Born in Staunton in 1950, Collins received his B.S. in chemistry from UVA in 1970. Collins joins Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano as the second UVA alum appointed by President Obama to head a federal department or agency.
–photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health
3 comments
Why would you take a great scientist out of the labratory and sentence him to the slow agonizing death of trying to get entrenched government workers to earn their keep? What they should do is get someone who has run a medium size business for 40 years in there and let this fine gentleman tell him what needs to be done. I wish hem well but having worked at NIH I know he has an uphill battle.
There is some good info on Francis Collins at these links:
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/04/john-horgan-and-francis-collin...
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-atheists-on-francis-collin...
sure wish people would leave his religious beliefs out of the conversation, the guy worked on one of the most important scientific projects in history and is well qualified as an administrator to run NIH
perhaps for those who really want to learn more you might start at wikipedia