Jim Collins

Jim Collins, Ph.D., is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, as well as a member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology faculty. He is also a core founding faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Dr. Collins is one of the founders of the field of synthetic biology, and his research group is currently focused on using synthetic biology to create next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics. Dr. Collins’s patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies, and he has helped launch a number of companies, including Synlogic and Senti Biosciences.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Rhodes Scholarship, a MacArthur “Genius” Award, an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award, as well as several teaching awards. Dr. Collins is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine as well as the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and the World Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Collins received a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Oxford.