It looks like Dr. Francis Collins—a familiar name to regular readers of this blog—will be running the National Institutes of Health. According to someone familiar with the selection process, Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and most recently the founder of The BioLogos Foundation, is the leading candidate, and screening is in the final stages.
Collins became a Christian in his 20s "after realizing that his atheist perspective was unable to provide answers to profound questions about the meaning of life, and was inconsistent with observation about the nature of the universe and of humankind," according to the BioLogos Web site. In his 2006 best-selling book The Language of God, he shared how he found harmony between his scientific and religious worldviews, and he launched BioLogos last month to address the country's culture war between science and faith.
Stay tuned: The announcement from President Barack Obama could come this week. —Heather Wax