Jim Collins’ research isn’t for the faint of heart — or stomach.

“We don’t talk about it at the dinner table,” he laughed.

Collins, a parasitologist who conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois, studies parasitic flatworms known as schistosomes. These parasites have caused profound morbidity in over 200 million of the world’s poorest people.

Recently named an HHMI Investigator, Collins offered insight into his academic background, what attracted him to Champaign-Urbana, and how he combats healthcare inequities through research.

What were your early career aspirations? Did you always know you wanted to be a scientist?
I always enjoyed science, but I was a pretty mediocre student through high school. I was kind of aimless. Early in life if I had to pick a career, I would’ve chosen to be a professional baseball player or a rock star. After high school I attended Southeast Missouri State University, because it was the only place I got in. I took a biology class in my second semester and instantly fell in love. I’ve been a biologist ever since.

When did you become interested in parasites?
My postdoc research focused on the basic biology of free-living planarian flatworms. When I joined Phil Newmark’s lab at Illinois, we discovered a hormone that controlled their sexual development. But then I had this realization of, “Do people really care about how planarians have sex?” Every day I rode the 2 Red bus between my lab and apartment, which gave me 45 minutes to read and think. Parasites are an evolutionary cousin to planarians, and I realized there wasn’t a lot of research being done on schistosomes. So I saw tremendous opportunity in that literature gap; I wanted to know if we could leverage what we’d learned from planarians to studying schistosomes.

How did your time in Urbana-Champaign influence your life and career?
Champaign is a wonderful place. I’ve never been very tempted by big cities, and the community here provided everything I needed. It was a very transformative period in my scientific journey. Phil (Newmark) allowed us to pursue whatever interested us. Illinois introduced me to the importance of intellectual freedom. This is where I established my philosophy for doing science; I never really wanted to leave.

What do you most enjoy about research?
I love the discovery aspect: getting to know something no one has ever known before. Even better is mentorship — bringing someone else to that discovery and getting to train the next generation. I have the best job in the world. I get to travel, talk to interesting people, and interact with diverse populations.

Schistosomes infect many of the world’s most impoverished communities. Is healthcare disparity something you tackle a lot in your research?
This kind of research is really neglected in the scientific community. It doesn’t attract a lot of attention because it is associated with low mortality; it’s not killing people in numbers like malaria or tuberculosis. But schistosomes are devastating because they lay eggs in bodily tissues, causing very high morbidity. Affected populations can’t pull themselves out of poverty because they’re always sick, and the current treatment we have isn’t very good. It has really opened my eyes to things I had never thought of before. There are lots of inequities in the world, especially with neglected tropical diseases like schistosomiasis.

Do you encounter any misconceptions about your field?
Science has been on the ropes against public skepticism for a while, especially during Covid. Our goal is to get to the bottom of what we believe to be the truth based on the data in front of us, but the truth can always change when new data come to light. As scientists, we need to do a better job of communicating that.

What is your proudest achievement?
I’ve been lucky to have so many great students and postdocs. Science happens because of great trainees. Mentoring and training is as good as it gets.

Tell us about some of your future career goals.
There are still a lot of mysteries surrounding schistosomes. I’d like to do a better job of targeting parasites therapeutically and finding new avenues for treatment. Our lab recently discovered a pheromone used by the male schistosome to trigger sexual development of the female, and it’s a completely new biological molecule. And it turns out that this molecule is also in planarians. So we’re hypothesizing that this biological molecule is actually quite ubiquitous in nature, and there might be several groups of animals that have these types of molecules involved in signaling processes.

Do you have any advice for current or future students?
Don’t shy away from doing the big thing, taking the leap of faith, making mistakes, and being wrong.