Dr Jim Collins

Jim Collins received his BS in Biology from Southeast Missouri State University (2003) and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis (2008). He did postdoctoral work with Phillip Newmark (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His research focuses on the basic biology parasitic flatworms called schistosomes. These parasites infect more than 200 million of the world's poorest people, causing morbidity that rivals global killers including Malaria and TB. Despite their devastating global impact, only a single drug is available to treat schistosome infection. As a postdoc Dr. Collins developed new functional genomic tools to study these worms and using these tools discovered a novel population of stem cells that are likely key to parasite survival inside their human host. By studying these stem cells, and applying large-scale functional genomic approaches, his work aims to develop new therapeutic avenues to combat these devastating parasites.