James J. Collins

Jim Collins is a Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. He is the Life Sciences faculty lead at the Jameel Clinic as well as a member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology (HST) faculty. He serves as the Director of the Antibiotics-AI Project at MIT. He is also a Founding Faculty member of the Wyss Institute and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

His research group works in synthetic biology and systems biology, with a particular focus on using network biology and AI approaches to study antibiotic action, bacterial defense mechanisms, and the emergence of resistance.

Known has the “father of synthetic biology”, Collins and his work on synthetic gene circuits and programmable cells has led to the development of new classes of diagnostics and therapeutics, which have influenced research in detecting and treating infections caused by emerging pathogens such as Ebola, Zika, SARS-CoV-2, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.