Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., currently serves as the Special Advisor to President
Biden for Special Projects. In this role, he is leading a bold program to help eliminate
Hepatitis C in the United States. Prior to this, he served as the Acting Science Advisor
to President Biden, steering the administration’s plans and programs to advance scientific
solutions to humanity’s needs, especially for health issues. In that role, he worked
closely with Dr. Alondra Nelson, the former Acting Director of the Office of Science
Technology Policy (OSTP). Dr. Collins also maintains his longstanding position as a
Senior Investigator in the intramural program of the National Human Genome Research
Institute, pursuing genomics research on type 2 diabetes and a rare disorder of
premature aging called progeria.

Dr. Collins previously served as the 16th Director of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2009. In
2017, President Donald Trump asked Dr. Collins to continue to serve as the NIH
Director. President Joe Biden did the same in 2021. For those 12 years, serving an
unprecedented three administrations, Dr. Collins oversaw the work of the largest
supporter of biomedical research in the world, spanning the spectrum from basic to
clinical research. Dr. Collins stepped down as Director on December 19, 2021.

Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes
and his previous leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which
culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA
instruction book. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research
Institute at NIH from 1993-2008.

Dr. Collins is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the
National Academy of Sciences, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
November 2007, and received the National Medal of Science in 2009. In 2020, he was
elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (UK) and was also named the 50th
winner of the Templeton Prize, which celebrates scientific and spiritual curiosity.

Anne Schuchat, MD is an internist and epidemiologist whose career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spanned 33 years. She was the agency’s Principal Deputy Director from 2015-2021 and served twice as acting director. From 2006-2015, she was the first Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), leading the nation’s immunization program through recommendations for several new vaccines and the global deployment of vaccines against pneumonia and meningitis.

From 1998-2005, Dr. Schuchat was Chief of the Respiratory Diseases Branch. She first joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1988. She was instrumental in decades of CDC emergency responses including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 outbreak of vaping associated lung injuries, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the 2003 SARS outbreak where she deployed to Beijing. She collaborated on meningitis, pneumonia, and Ebola vaccine trials in West Africa and surveillance and prevention projects in South Africa.

In the 1990’s, Dr. Schuchat spearheaded guidelines for prevention of perinatal group B streptococcus, preventing an estimated 100,000 newborn life-threatening infections so far. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and received the USPHS Distinguished Service Medal, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Lifetime Achievement Award and was a finalist for the Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement Medal from the Partnership for Public Service. Dr. Schuchat retired as a Rear Admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the USPHS in 2018 and from CDC in 2021. She serves on the boards of Swarthmore College and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.