In his twelve years as the director of the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical-research in the world and the longest that anyone has held the position in half a century—Collins oversaw twenty-seven institutes, forty-six thousand employees and contractors, and a budget that grew to forty-two billion dollars. He became the only Presidentially appointed N.I.H. director to serve in more than one Administration, let alone three; he helped to secure budget increases of more than forty per cent, using them to fund a slew of new programs and initiatives related to, among other things, brain health, addiction research, and genetic based therapy development.
