16th Annual Richard and Janet Southby Distinguished Lectureship in Comparative Health Policy: Featuring Dr. Francis Collins

The Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University presents the 16th Annual Richard and Janet Southby Distinguished Lectureship in Comparative Health Policy: a fireside chat with Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, moderated by Manya Magnus, PhD, MPH, followed by audience Q&A.

Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist best known for leading the Human Genome Project, which produced the first complete sequence of the human genome in 2003. He served as the 16th director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021, under three presidents, the longest tenure in the agency’s history. During that time he launched the BRAIN Initiative, the Cancer Moonshot, and All of Us, the largest longitudinal cohort study ever mounted by NIH, and guided the agency’s response to the Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks. He retired from NIH in 2025 after 32 years of federal service. His honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the Templeton Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences’ 2026 Public Welfare Medal. His most recent book is The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.

Dr. Magnus is the Michael and Lori Milken Professor of Public Health and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Milken Institute SPH, where she leads the NIH-funded DC Clinical Trials Unit and GW HIV Predoctoral Research in Epidemiology T32 program, and co-directs the NIH-funded DC Center for AIDS Research. Her research spans over three decades of research on biomedical and structural interventions for people with and at risk for HIV.