Category: Francis Collins

Francis Collins: somewhere between Varmus and Zerhouni

From today’s New York Times profile of new NIH director Francis Collins:

Dr. Collins’s predecessor, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, drove a silver Mercedes sports car to work and wore expensive suits, and those choices — along with a natural reserve and the unpopularity of President George W. Bush, who appointed him — meant he was never entirely embraced by the thousands of rumpled scientists who make up the core of the health institutes’ staff.

That he was a brilliant scientist and had highly developed organizational skills never won him plaudits outside of the agency’s top leaders, many of whom praised Dr. Zerhouni effusively.

By contrast, Dr. Zerhouni’s predecessor, Dr. Harold Varmus, rode a bicycle to work, wore khakis and was beloved.

With his high-end motorcycle, Dr. Collins seems to be splitting the difference between his predecessors. But he is distinctly in Dr. Varmus’s camp on clothing, and he has promised to be far more open than either. He has held town-hall-style meetings with staff members, reporters and outsiders. And neither of his predecessors was given to meeting reporters at the nearby greasy spoon

Francis Collins takes the controls

Science Insider has the story. Money quote:

Asked about NIH’s intramural program, he is “resistant to the idea that [the program] is in need of some sort of dramatic redo” but is pondering whether to create a pool of intramural money that, like NIH’s Common Fund, could be used to fund crosscutting research quickly.

This is really interesting. We periodically hear the meme that somehow the intramural program is in trouble. I’ve always suspected it’s partly driven by envy (intramural scientists don’t have to apply for grants like those of us in the extramural community). But Collins standing up for the intramural program is refreshing and the idea of a rapidly deployable intramural pool is great.

Jim