President Obama will nominate genetics pioneer Francis Collins to lead the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the White House announced yesterday.

Collins was part of the team that discovered the gene that is mutated in cystic fibrosis. He later led the international public effort to sequence the human genome and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

NIH is the principle U.S. government agency that funds biomedical research; during the next year the NIH will fund $37 billion in research grants to scientists at universities and research institutions around the country and spend $4 billion on research conducted at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

Collins has publically discussed and written about his devout Christian beliefs and argues that science and faith are compatible. He established the BioLogos Foundation “to address the escalating culture war between science and faith in the United States.” Unlike many evangelical Christians in the United States, Collins supports human embryonic stem cell research and is an outspoken advocate of the genetic and geologic evidence supporting evolution by natural selection. “Evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true,” he wrote. “If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

In May 2005 Collins and I had a brief encounter at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine graduation ceremony. I had been selected to give the student address (on behalf of all graduating PhDs). I knew I wasn’t good enough to give a funny speech, so I spoke about the duty scientists have to discuss their research with the public (something I’m still passionate about, one reason why I’m spending a year at the State Department). I got applause midway through the speech, and some of the faculty on stage and members of the audience actually stood up at the end, which doesn’t usually happen.

The speech ended, and I took my seat among the graduates, feeling pretty good about myself. Then Collins walked to the stage and after some opening remarks he withdrew a guitar from beneath the lectern and serenaded the audience with a rendition of the song ‘My Way,’ substituting cheeky, science-relevant lyrics for the original. (Watch a similar performance at the University of Michigan.)

The audience was blown away. I was no longer feeling so good about myself, instead I was grateful that I got to address the crowd before he did, and not after.

Collins received a well-deserved standing ovation and my admiration, proving that he is a rock star of science.

One of my colleagues forwarded me an advertisement featuring Joe Perry, the guitarist from Aerosmith, rocking out with Francis Collins, the geneticist who discovered the gene that causes the disease cystic fibrosis. He went on to lead the U.S. government’s effort to sequence the entire human genome.

The advertisement is part of the rock stars of science campaign - Rock S.O.S. - whose goals are “to honor the researchers who are saving our lives, to make science rock as a career choice for the next generation, and to raise their platinum voices in demand for future research funding.”

Making science rock as a career choice is a great idea. Like many of my colleagues, I became a scientist because of a passion for understanding how the human body works. But I wasn’t concerned about whether the position of a scientist was considered cool or glamorous. Unlike the wealthy lives of rock stars, scientists who have just finished their Ph.D.s and work as researchers at U.S. universities receive a salary of $36,996 per year.

Some perspective: in 2002, the average annual wage of a worker in the United States was $36,724, according to the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Adjusting for inflation, that’s $43,765 in 2008 dollars. In 2002, scientists who had just finished their Ph.D.s earned $31,092 (that’s the actual statistic, not adjusted for inflation). Many workers in the United States didn’t graduate from college, much less attend graduate school.

As rock star Cheryl Crow said in a press release, “It’s not every day that platinum-selling artists have a chance to jam with Nobel Prize winners and recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but maybe we should. What these scientists are doing to fight diseases like breast cancer is just as much driven by inspiration and a passion for humanity as the best song ever written. Without our realizing it, they are quietly making everyone’s life healthier and fuller, so we all owe them our deepest respect and support.”

According to Rock S.O.S., “these days a rock star can be anyone whose genius moves the crowd-whether they’re onstage or in the lab.”

Just don’t expect to be financially rewarded - like a rock star - for using your genius to move the crowd from the lab.