Dr. Francis Collins will remain at the helm of the National Institutes of Health—at least for now.
Collins sent a message Thursday evening to employees at the Bethesda-based medical research center saying he had offered to resign Jan. 20, as did other officials appointed during President Barak Obama’s administration. However, he said, his resignation letter was returned and he was being held over as NIH director.
“I have no further details at this time,” Collins wrote. “I look forward to working with the new Administration and all of you to carry on the important work of NIH.”
Collins took over as director of the research center in August 2009.
There were some questions about whether he would remain as director after then-President-elect Donald Trump reportedly met earlier this month with Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican who represents Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Harris, a Johns Hopkins-educated anesthesiologist, is the only member of Congress to have conducted NIH-funded research.
Collins is a physician-geneticist who led the medical research center through the Ebola outbreak of 2015 and who previously served as the director of NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993-2008.
NIH’s Bethesda campus is home to about 20,000 employees, according to the Federal Register.
