What U.S. institute did Francis Collins direct when he became HGP head in 1993?

Francis Collins directed the National Center for Human Genome Research when he became head of the Human Genome Project in 1993.

Collins succeeded James D. Watson as director of the NIH center in 1993. The center was the National Institutes of Health’s main institutional base for the U.S. genome effort, while the international project also involved the Department of Energy and sequencing centers in several countries.

The name can cause a historical mix-up: the National Center for Human Genome Research was later renamed the National Human Genome Research Institute, or NHGRI, in 1997. Thus, NHGRI is the modern name, but the quiz’s 1993 wording correctly calls it the National Center for Human Genome Research.

As director, Collins helped oversee the public consortium’s race to produce a working draft. That draft was announced in 2000, and the Human Genome Project was declared complete in 2003, although later work filled difficult repetitive regions that the original project had not resolved.