The Dickson Prize in Medicine

The Dickson Prize in Medicine is awarded annually to a leading American investigator who is engaged in innovative, paradigm-shifting biomedical research. Previous winners >

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2020 Dickson Prize Goes to James J. Collins

Prize is Pitt School of Medicine’s most prestigious annual award

James J. Collins, PhD, is the 2020 recipient of the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s highest honor. Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science and professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also affiliated faculty with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Wyss Institute at Harvard.

Collins is a pioneer in synthetic biology whose ideas have contributed to novel diagnostics and treatments targeting infections and complex diseases. Using engineering principles to design and construct synthetic gene networks, he was one of the first to harness the biochemical and biophysical properties of nucleic acids and proteins to create biological circuits.