Francis Collins (born 1950). Portrait of the US doctor and geneticist Francis Sellers Collins. Collins is best known for his landmark discoveries of the genes associated with a number of diseases and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, USA, from 1993-2008. He has served as the 16th director of NIH since 17th August 2009 (as of 2019)