Dr. Collins, 71, a geneticist and a physician who ran the health institutes for 12 years under three presidents, will continue working in his lab at the National Human Genome Research Institute, a division of the N.I.H. that he led before becoming director. As acting science adviser, he will address a broad range of issues, including climate change and pandemic preparedness.
He will also be an acting co-chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a high-powered group of experts in fields as diverse as agriculture, biochemistry, ecology and nanotechnology, created by the president in September to advise the White House on its approach to future pandemics, climate change and other global challenges.
Dr. Lander had been one of three co-chairs of the panel. The others are Frances Arnold, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemical engineer, and Maria T. Zuber, a geophysicist and planetary scientist who was the first woman to lead a NASA planetary mission.