NIH Director Francis Collins to Resign at Year’s End

WASHINGTON – National Institutes of Health director Dr Francis S. Collins has said he will step down by the end of the year, after leading the research center for 12 years and becoming a major source information during the coronavirus pandemic.

“There comes a time when an institution like the NIH really does get a new vision, a new leadership,” Collins, 71, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “It was the right time.”

An official announcement was expected Tuesday from the NIH. The Post and Politico reported Collins’ plans Monday night.

Based in Bethesda, Maryland, and part of the Department of Health and Human Services, NIH is the nation’s medical research agency and operates more than two dozen institutes and centers. He claims to be the biggest supporter of biomedical research in the world.

Collins was appointed director in 2009 by President Barack Obama and was invited to remain in this position by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He is the only NIH director appointed by the president to serve in multiple jurisdictions.

In the interview with the Post, Collins said he decided not to stay too long in the Biden administration and was convinced that the role of the NIH in developing therapies, tests and vaccines for the coronavirus had reached “a fairly stable place”.

Collins was Director of the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993 to 2008 and led the International Human Genome Project, which in 2003 completed a completed sequence of the Human DNA Instruction Manual. .