[2] In 1959 he was employed by the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Columbia, South Carolina.
[3] In 1963, the Public Health Service laboratory moved to Atlanta and Dr. Collins' group began working with non-human primates following the discovery that monkey malarias were transmissible to humans.
Parasites from monkeys or apes isolated in Asia, South America, and Africa were sent to the laboratory in Chamblee, Georgia, where they were adapted and transmitted to laboratory-maintained primates and their life cycles described and characterized.
[2] Collins did research with many species of malaria parasites, particularly Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, and P. simium.
The scientific community recognized Collins' intensive work in this field naming a subspecies for him, Plasmodium vivax collinsi.