SPEAKERS AND ARTISTS

Francis Collins

Dr. Francis Collins is a physician-geneticist and currently serves as the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. In this capacity, he oversees the effort to sequence the entire human DNA code: the Human Genome Project. His laboratories have discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and most recently, the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a dramatic form of premature aging.