James Collins is smart, but don't call him a genius. As a 2003 MacArthur "genius grant" fellow, Collins has endured much good-natured ribbing. The morning the awards were announced, he was heckled by his neighbor, who, Collins says, "leaned out his window, still in his pajamas, and yelled, 'Hey, Jimmy Neutron! I didn't know I was living next to a genius!'"
"I remember the lab bought him one of those beanie hats with the little propeller on top," says Attila Priplata of Stryker Development in Cambridge, Mass., who was a graduate student at the time. Tim Gardner, a fellow student, hung a 'Genius In/Genius Out' sign on Collins' office door.
Despite all the antics, the award, says Priplata, "really put the lab on the map." It also paved the way for Collins to make a smooth transition from designing devices to enhance balance in the elderly to building the first ...
