James Joseph Collins (born June 26, 1965) is an American bioengineer and biophysicist who is one of the founders of synthetic biology. He is known for pioneering synthetic gene networks and programmable cells, which launched the field of synthetic biology and influenced research in the detection and treatment of Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19. He pioneered the use of artificial intelligence in antibiotic discovery, identifying novel antibiotics effective against drug-resistant bacterial pathogens. He is also known for pioneering stochastic resonance, neurostimulation, and biological dynamics in the research of physiological and biological systems. He is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
After graduating from the College of the Holy Cross, Collins earned his doctorate in medical engineering from the University of Oxford in 1990 as a Rhodes Scholar. He was a professor of biomedical engineering, a professor of medicine, University Professor, and the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he co-founded the Center for BioDynamics before moving to MIT in 2014. He is currently a director of the MIT Jameel Clinic, a member of the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and the Broad Institute, and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and IMES.
Collins is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 for biotechnology research, the Lagrange Prize in 2010 for outstanding contributions to complexity science, and the Dickson Prize in Medicine in 2020 for pioneering synthetic biology. He received the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 2023 and was named a Clarivate Citation Laureate in Chemistry that same year for pioneering synthetic gene circuits.
Early life and education Collins was born on June 26, 1965, in the Bronx, then moved to Bellerose, New York. His father was an aviation engineer employed in NASA and military projects, and partly developed the optical system for the Apollo Lunar Module. His mother was a mathematician. His paternal grandfather, Maurice Collins, and his paternal grandmother, Helen Kiely, were both Irish natives who were raised in Abbeyfeale, County Limerick, and Kiskeam, County Cork, respectively. At age 10, Collins moved to New Hampshire with his family after finishing elementary school, growing up in Nashua. He first developed an interest in medical engineering when one of his grandfathers became blind and the other suffered multiple strokes.
After high school, Collins initially intended to study electrical engineering in college. He was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but chose instead to enroll at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, for the college's community. As an undergraduate at Holy Cross, he was a member of its track and cross country teams, and ran a 4:17 mile. He worked as a cartoonist for the school newspaper, The Crusader, in addition to being a class officer and editor of a science literary magazine. He also won a President's Volunteer Service Award and, in 1986, was named the Fenwick Scholar, the college's highest academic honor. He graduated from Holy Cross with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in physics as valedictorian in 1987. As the Fenwick Scholar, he was granted exemption from classes to pursue research as a senior and completed a thesis titled, "Functional Neuromuscular Stimulation: An Analysis of the Biomechanical and Neuromuscular Foundations of Walking".
After graduating from Holy Cross, Collins was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study in England at the University of Oxford. As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned his Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in medical engineering from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1990. His doctoral dissertation, completed under John J. O'Connor at the Department of Engineering Science, was titled, "Joint Mechanics: Modelling of the Lower Limb". While pursuing his doctorate, he played as a member of the Oxford University Men's Basketball team and earned an Oxford Blue. In 1989, while still a doctoral student, Collins began a collaboration with mathematician Ian Stewart, with whom he published a series of papers on animal locomotion during the 1990s.
Academic career
Boston University (1990–2014)
After receiving his doctorate, Collins joined the faculty of Boston University (BU) in 1990. One of his early research focuses included kinesiology; he developed a series of devices to improve locomotion, neural function, and cardiac function, including vibrating insoles. He was appointed a professor of biomedical engineering at the Boston University College of Engineering, where he co-founded the Center for BioDynamics in 1997 and served as its director, and earned multiple recognitions for teaching, including being named the college's "Biomedical Engineering Teacher of the Year" and the university's "Professor of the Year". He won the university's Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2000, the university's highest teaching honor. While at BU, he simultaneously taught at Harvard Medical School from 1998 to 2010.
In 1999, Collins, along with his biomedical engineering student Timothy Gardner, executed one of the first attempts to engineer genomes to perform certain functions. Together, they edited the genes of E. coli bacteria to create or stop creating certain proteins. Their findings of a genetic on/off, or "toggle switch," were published in Nature in an article now considered seminal in the field of synthetic biology. In October 2003, he became the first bioengineer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, which he received for "identifying abstract principles underlying complex biological phenomena such as motor control during standing and walking". That same year, he was the director of the Applied Biodynamics Laboratory at BU. In 2008, he was named a principal investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute—the first from Boston University—to pursue research in gene expression and antibiotic resistance in single cells. On May 18, 2009, he was appointed as one of BU’s two inaugural William F. Warren Distinguished Professors, alongside George Annas. In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
By 2011, Collins held five appointments at Boston University: William F. Warren Distinguished Professor, University Professor, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Medicine, and co-director of the Center for BioDynamics. That same year, he became the third BU professor to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering; by that time, his research focused on the invention of synthetic gene networks and the development of techniques to improve biological function and devices to treat brain failure and other diseases, such as Parkinson's disease.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014–present) In December 2014, Collins moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was appointed the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and was additionally named a professor at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. Since then, he has been a joint professor in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering and a faculty member of the Biophysics Program, the Synthetic Biology Center, Microbiology Graduate Program, Computational & Systems Biology Initiative, and Center for Microbiome Informatics & Therapeutics, all at MIT. He has also been a visiting professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford since 2023.
In 2016, Collins was appointed Allen Distinguished Investigator by the Allen Institute to research potential synthetic biology applications to antimicrobial resistance in drug-resistant bacteria. On October 3, 2018, he was named by Anantha Chandrakasan, the dean of the MIT School of Engineering, as faculty lead of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, alongside Regina Barzilay. In addition to the MIT Jameel Clinic, he leads the Antibiotics-AI Project at MIT, a research initiative which uses deep learning to discover new antibiotics. In 2024, he became a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is currently a member of the editorial board of the scientific journals Science, Cell, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Collins has been involved with a number of start-up companies, and his inventions and technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech and medical device companies. He is the co-founder of the biomedical companies Senti Biosciences, Sherlock Biosciences, and Cellarity.
Harvard University Collins has been a visiting professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School since 2008. That same year, he became a founding Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where he currently is lead of Living Cellular Devices. He has also been a member and senior associate of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a professor of the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology since 2014.
Research
Synthetic biology
Collins' work on synthetic gene circuits launched the field of synthetic biology.Editorial: Ten years of synergy, Nature 463, 269-270 (21 January 2010), doi:10.1038/463269b He was the first (along with Michael Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler) to show that one can harness the biophysical properties of nucleic acids and proteins to create biological circuits, which can be used to rewire and reprogram living cells.
In a paper published in Nature, Collins designed and constructed a genetic toggle switch – a synthetic, bistable gene regulatory network – in E. coli. The toggle switch forms a synthetic, addressable cellular memory unit with broad implications for biophysics, biomedicine and biotechnology. In the same issue of Nature, Elowitz and Leibler showed that one can build a synthetic genetic oscillator (called the repressilator) in E. coli. Collins’ Nature paper on the genetic toggle switch and Elowitz's and Leibler's Nature paper on the repressilator are considered landmark pieces which began the field of synthetic biology.
Building on this work, Collins showed that synthetic gene networks can be used as regulatory modules and interfaced with a microbe's genetic circuitry to create programmable cells for a variety applications, e.g., synthetic probiotics to serve as living diagnostics and living therapeutics to detect, treat and prevent infections such as cholera and C. difficile. He also designed and constructed engineered riboregulators (RNA switches) for sensing and control, microbial kill switches and genetic counters for biocontainment, synthetic bacteriophage to combat resistant bacterial infections, genetic switchboards for metabolic engineering, and tunable genetic switches for gene and cell therapy. Recently, Collins developed freeze-dried, cell-free synthetic gene circuits, an innovative platform that forms the basis for inexpensive, paper-based diagnostic tests for emerging pathogens (e.g., Zika, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, antibiotic-resistant bacteria), wearable biosensors, and portable biomolecular manufacturing (e.g., to produce vaccine antigens) in the developing world.
In the context of synthetic biology and regenerative medicine, Collins collaborated with Derrick Rossi and George Q. Daley on a study using synthetic mRNA technology for biomedical applications. The team showed that synthetic mRNA could be used for highly efficient stem cell reprogramming and redifferentiation. This work was published in Cell Stem Cell in 2010, and Rossi used this synthetic biology technology platform to found Moderna.