 Let me just amplify what Rudy mentioned earlier, that we are in the open session of this Council meeting, which means that we are being webcast live, everything, all the presentations, including my director's report, all these recordings will be made available as a permanent archive on the Internet. That includes both the presentations and many of the associated documents you'll be hearing from various speakers. We have, as you heard, a number of new Council members, so I want to make you aware that there's an electronic resource that we build associated with my director's report each time. This is sort of analogous to a supplemental materials section of a published manuscript. The URL for this is shown here on the slide. And all the slides that I'll show during my director's report are available to you electronically and for those listening in remote or watching on the videocast, both as a PDF file, but also as the actual PowerPoint file itself. And then in addition, for slides associated with specific documents or URLs or anything that will augment the slide, they're indicated by a document number in the bottom right-hand corner of that slide, which then refers to a listing on a website that is shown here, the webpage is shown here, where you can access or download the relevant materials that serve as additional information relevant for that slide. In fact, this entire electronic resource is also archived along with the actual videotape of director's report. Now, there's going to be other presentations during the open session of this Council meeting. My director's report will try to avoid too much redundancy with those other presentations. I won't delve deep into those. After my presentation this morning, Dr. Dan Castor, who's NHGRI scientific director overseeing our intramural research program, will provide an update and an overview about that part of the Institute, which we do have updates on from time to time, and this is one of those times. Then after lunch, Dr. Jennifer Troyer will give you an update on the Human Heredity and Health in Africa, H3Africa Initiative, a program of the Common Fund and NHGRI Leads. And then there are going to be two meeting reports you're going to hear from. Mr. Vence Bonham is going to discuss the recent roundtable on inclusion and engagement of underrepresented population in genomic research and the meeting that took place earlier since the last Council meeting in particular. And then Dan Rodin, a member of Council, is going to discuss the recent integrating genomic sequencing into clinical care, C's, or in beyond meetings that also took place. And then finally, we're going to have two concept clearance presentations made to this Council. Specifically, one is going to relate to a proposed clinical sequencing evidence-generating research program, or CSER2, while the other will relate to a proposed investigator-initiated clinical sequencing research program, or ICESR. And both of these will be presented by Dr. Lucia Hindorff. So for the rest of my director's report, I will follow these seven areas, which we have found provide a very nice framework for covering the relevant material, starting with some general NHGRI update. Well, exactly 10 days after the last Council meeting, the field of genomics did indeed witness an important odometer moment. That is that on October 1, 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Human Genome Project. Now, two things happened to commemorate this historic milestone. First, we at the Institute launched a six-part monthly seminar series to showcase some of the important historical aspects of the Human Genome Project, which I'll actually be telling you about later in my director's report. But second, I co-authored a comment piece in Nature, along with the two former NHGRI directors, Dr. Jim Watson and Francis Collins. This article highlighted some of the key legacies of the Human Genome Project beyond the generated data and discusses how these have influenced big biology more broadly over the last 25 years. To tell you honestly, my motivation for writing this piece was in part to remind scientists, especially younger ones, about the important ways in which the Human Genome Project changed the biomedical research enterprise in a very positive way, aspects of the project that perhaps are underappreciated at times. In terms of personnel, last month, Dr. Camilla Day retired from her position as a scientific review officer for the Center for Inherited Disease Research, or CIDR. For a number of years, Camilla managed the scientific administrative functions for CIDR, an NIH-wide program administered by NHGRI. And recall that the CIDR program provides high-throughput genotyping and DNA sequencing services to qualified projects via a contract mechanism with Johns Hopkins University. Camilla had a long and successful career at NIH, where she managed many study sections covering molecular and cell biology, genetics, and genomics, including two prominent study sections, the mammalian genetics study section, and the genomics computational biology and technology study section. And we wish Camilla all the best in her post-retirement phase. In terms of new people to the institute, last month, Ms. Deanna Intersol was appointed the NHGRI Chief Grants Management Officer. Deanna comes to NHGRI from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where she served as the lead grants management specialist for the past 11 years. In her new role at NHGRI, she will review and award research grants, conduct quarterly audits to ensure compliance with relevant policies, and lead the grants administration branch whose webpage is actually shown here. NHGRI is excited to welcome Deanna to NHGRI. Meanwhile, I would like to personally thank Monika Christman of NHGRI and Annie Mirbeck of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who each serve stints as Acting Chief Grants Management Officer while we worked to fill the position that Deanna now has. Another appointment this past December, Ms. Christina Caposti was appointed the new chief of the Policy and Program Analysis Branch within the NHGRI Division of Policy Communications and Education. In September, I told counsel that Christina was made the Acting Chief of this branch while a formal search was conducted, and he was to say she ended up getting the position. Prior to joining NHGRI, Christina worked as a program manager at the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco with council member Bob Nussbaum, where she developed policy responses to potential changes in state and federal legislation, coordinated activities with the US Food and Drug Administration and researched the ethical, legal, and social applications related to sequencing the DNA from newborn blood spots. In her new role as a branch chief, she will oversee policy development analysis at NHGRI, legislative, and federal interactions, as well as evaluation of NHGRI research and policy priorities. She's a familiar face, actually, to the institute as an alumnus of the NHGRI ASHG Genetics and Public Policy Fellowship. And speaking of that fellowship, as I hope you recall, NHGRI's Division of Policy Communications and Education partners with the American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG, to sponsor two training fellowships. The well-established Genetics and Public Policy Fellowship, which I just mentioned, but also the recently launched Genetics and Education Fellowship. To date, there have been 15 Genetics and Public Policy Fellows and two Genetics and Education Fellows. Well, I'm mentioning this now because we're currently accepting applications for the 2016-2017 fellowship year, which runs from September 2016 to December 2017. Now, during the year of the fellowship, the fellows complete a series of rotations with NHGRI and ASHG, as well as externally, either on Capitol Hill or with educational programs, depending upon the program. Now, applications are due April 25th of this year, and so please share this information with members of your department, institutions, as well as any individuals you think might be interested in these exciting fellowship opportunities. Onto awards in November, our own Dr. Jeff Schloss, Director of the Division of Genome Sciences within the NHGRI Extramural Research Program, received a Department of Health and Human Services DHHS Career Achievement Award. For 19, and shown here, getting the award with the secretary, for 19 years, Jeff has established and overseen novel initiatives that aim to develop new DNA analysis technologies. In particular, he has led NHGRI's signature program in DNA sequencing technology development. The latter has been a key contributor to the remarkable reduction in DNA sequencing costs by nearly a million fold over the last roughly 15 years. His program is arguably the most successful technology development effort in the history of NIH. In addition, he has promoted interdisciplinary research through multiple trans-NIH and trans-federal programs. Congratulations, Jeff. Wow, I'm not sure in six years I've ever been interrupted in the middle of a director's report for applause, Jeff. So that must really rank. Congratulations. Last December, I participated in a congressional briefing hosted by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The purpose of the briefing was to inform House members and their staff about precision medicine and Cystic Fibrosis. I spoke about the potential for genomics and precision medicine generally, while others on the panel discussed the importance of Cystic Fibrosis from the foundation, research, and patient perspectives. Our collective remarks all stressed the importance of funding for basic research. The briefing was well attended and the audience included Congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, whose co-chair of the Congressional Cystic Fibrosis Caucus, as well as Congressman John Fleming, a Republican from Louisiana, whose grandson has Cystic Fibrosis. And then in January, NIH was visited by the Israeli Minister of Health, Yaakov Litzman, along with several other Israeli Ministry of Health officials. Now, during this visit, Dr. Bill Gaul, NHGRI Clinical Director, and I led a delegation on a tour of the NIH Clinical Center, where we visited a pediatric patient participating in the Undiagnosed Diseases Program. The minister was particularly interested in learning more about Undiagnosed Diseases Network and its potential for collaborating with Israeli researchers and clinicians. Now, one topic that Warren's highlighting, I thought, relates to something that every one of you is aware of and that is the growing challenges of big data. And that's big data for genomics and big data otherwise. And there are many aspects associated with these big data challenges, but one set of problems relates to sustaining data resources, such as large databases. And there are multiple active conversations going on about this problem here at NHGRI, in Dr. Phil Bourne's Office of the Associate Director for Data Science, at other NIH institutes who fund data resources among the NIH leadership, and also by other funding agencies, both in the United States and abroad. I have spoken actively about the data resource sustainability issues, in part because of the challenges that NHGRI is now facing in supporting genomic data resources. Well, since the last council meeting, there have actually been two high-profile publications relevant to these conversations that I wanted to bring to your attention. Now, in early November, Nature published this perspective about sustaining the big data ecosystem written by Dr. Phil Bourne, NIGMS director, Dr. John Lorch, and myself. This article details our collective views about the major challenges funding agencies are facing to support resources that house biomedical data. And we emphasize the acute need to explore new models for sustaining these data resources. Now, related to our Nature publication, a news piece that some of you may have seen came out in the January 1 issue of Science that discusses how some key data resources are in jeopardy because of funding challenges. Now, the article heavily features the data resources supported by NHGRI, highlighting some of the hard issues confronted by this council in recent years. Now, while I like the article on the left, which I co-authored, more than the news piece on the right, in which I was quoted, I am pleased, actually, that both of these things came out because they're helping to prominently feature the hard issues that we face, and that having Nature and Science both have articles about this, I think helps raise the awareness to the larger research community. I am certain we will continue to discuss these issues with council in the coming months and years because these challenges are only going to grow with time. So, moving on to general NIH updates, let's start with a new appointment for a good friend of the institute, Dr. Michael Lauer was recently appointed to be the new deputy director for extramural research. Mike came to the NIH in 2007 as the director of the Division of Prevention and Population Science at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for NHLBI. And from 2009 until recently, he served as the director of NHLBI's Division of Cardiovascular Sciences. It's great to have Mike in this new position overseeing the Office of Extramural Research at NIH. Now, as you may remember from my director's report at the September council meeting, Congress tasked the NIH with developing a new five-year strategic plan as part of the fiscal year 2015 Cromnebis appropriation. After an intense effort, the NIH-wide strategic plan for fiscal years 2016 to 2020 was submitted to Congress in December. This new strategic plan was developed with input from hundreds of stakeholders and scientific advisors in collaboration with leadership and staff from across the NIH. Now, recall that traditionally, NIH operates as distinct institutes and centers and offices, most of which develop their own strategic plans, as we do, aligned with their own congressionally mandated missions. While the new NIH-wide strategic plan complements these individual plans and outlines a vision for biomedical research that capitalizes on NIH's holistic strengths and capabilities, the plan focuses on some core objectives to help guide NIH's priorities over the next five years and also goes on to make some bold predictions for future outcomes of NIH research. And the full content of this plan is available online at the URL provided under Document 9. Moving on to budget, after a tumultuous fall with the resignation of former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and the installation of Paul Ryan as the new speaker, a debt-sealing battle and several continuing resolutions, the fiscal year 2016 budget was finally passed in December of 2015. This year's budget contains an equal increase in both defense and non-defense spending and ultimately gives meaningful increase in the funding for NHGRI and NIH. In fact, as this played out, it became clear that increasing biomedical research funding was actually a rallying cry for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Well, the relevant high-level numbers are shown here. Let me go through them. NIH received a 6.6% increase, which amounted to an increase of roughly $2 billion. Because some of these NIH funds were designated to specific programs such as the Precision Medicine Initiative and others, the individual institutes received a lower percent increase. Now, nonetheless, NHGRI did see its budget increase by roughly 3.9%, which amounts to about a $20 million increase. I can tell you that this now places NHGRI's budget above the $500 million mark for the first time since the sequestration hit a few years ago, which when we plummeted below $500 million. So this is fiscal 16. I will tell you of note that President Obama is expected to release his budget proposal for next fiscal year, that is fiscal year 2017, on February 9th. That's tomorrow. And after that is released, Dr. Francis Collins will hold a public briefing for stakeholders to discuss NIH fiscal year 2017 and also 2016 budget matters. So look for that tomorrow. Moving on to broader updates relevant to the genomics research community. Sadly, NHGRI grantee Dr. Dave Flockhart passed away in November. Dave was a professor of molecular and soil biology at Harvard University and was a principal investigator in the implementing genomics in practice for Ignite Network. Dave's pioneering research in pharmacogenomics and drug-drug interactions made him a leader for the field of personalized medicine for over 20 years. A little over a year before his death, Dave was diagnosed with glioblastoma and throughout his treatment, he shared his personal experience in a blog. Dave was a driving force in the Ignite program and a pleasure to work with. He will be missed. Also sadly, Dr. Alfred Gilman, a pharmacologist and biochemist, passed away in December. Dr. Gilman shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Martin Rodbel for discovering G-proteins. Research he conducted while at the University of Virginia. He held various positions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas from 1981 to 2009, after which he served as the chief scientific officer at the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas until 2012. He was also one of the founders of Regeneron, a biotechnology company. Al also played an active role in defending science education and was a strong proponent of research ethics. I can tell you that at a more personal level, I regarded Al as a friend of mine. Actually, we first met in July of 2003 when we were both part of a scientific delegation that participated in a scientific symposium in Ecuador and then toured the Galapagos Islands together as a group. In fact, these are my photos taken while we were at the Galapagos, with Al and I in a raft going to shore of one of the islands on one day. The picture on the left, and boy, did I look younger then. And then Al and his wife with a local large Galapagos resident on the right. Al was a remarkable scientist and a great person to know, and I can tell you he will be greatly missed by many. Late last year, President Obama awarded the National Medal of Science to Dr. Mary Claire King and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Dr. Jonathan Rothberg. These awards are the nation's highest honors for achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology and these honorees are good friends and colleagues of NHGRI. Congratulations to both of them. Also, congratulations are due for individuals who recently were awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Now, this is an award that recognizes excellent in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life. Of relevance to genetics and genomics, the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences was awarded to Dr. John Hardy for discovery mutations in the amyloid precursor protein gene implicated in early onset Alzheimer's disease, Dr. Helen Hobbs for the discovery of human genomic variants that alter the levels and distribution of cholesterol and other lipids, and Dr. Svante Pavo for pioneering the sequencing of ancient DNA and ancient genome. And then meanwhile, the American Society for Human Genetics gave out awards to six members of our community at their 2015 annual meeting. Dr. Kay Davies was awarded the William Allen Award, which recognizes scientists for substantial and far-reaching scientific contributions to human genetics. Dr. Rod Howell was awarded the Advocacy Award, new in 2015, which honors individuals or groups who have exhibited excellence and achievement in applications of human genetics for the common good. Dr. Lena Krugliak was awarded the Kurt Stern Award, which recognizes the genetics and genomics researcher who has made significant scientific contributions during the past decade. And finally, Dr. Bob Nussbaum, a council member, Rod McGinnis and Hunt Willard were awarded the Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Education, which was established to recognize those who have made significant contributions of exceptional quality and great importance to human genetics education. Congratulations to all of them. Also, congratulations are due to individuals who were awarded the Memorial Sloan Kettering Award, because they named winners of their recently awarded the 2015 Hallmarks Prize for Cancer Research, an award that recognizes promising young investigators. This award is given every other year to cancer investigators who are 45 years of age or younger, and the prize recognizes contributions to the greater understanding of cancer. 2015 winners included Dr. Brad Bernstein, a principal investigator in the ENCODE project, and Dr. Howard Chang, a principal investigator in the Centers for Excellence in Genomics, or SEGs program. Yet more awards. The National Academy of Medicine recently announced their newly elected members. The new members include the eight individuals listed here who happen to have notable relevance to NHGRI. It includes two fellow institute directors. It includes some grantees. It includes some very distinguished genetics and geneticists and genomicsists, and it even includes my sibling. Now, similarly, an impressive number of genetics and genomics researchers were recently elected to be fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, with their names listed here. To my knowledge, none of these individuals are blood relatives, but more seriously, congratulations to these colleagues as well as those elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Moving on to year-end accolades for the end of 2015. The gene editing technique CRISPR was named Sciences 2015 Breakthrough of the Year. CRISPR-Cas9 is a molecular mechanism operating naturally in bacteria to protect cells against invading viruses, but has been cleverly adapted to manipulate specific DNA sequences in eukaryotes. The uptake of this general methodology in the research community has been rapid and impressive, as I'm sure all of you know. Meanwhile, when the scientists came out with its top 10 innovations of 2015, genomic technologies once again dominated the list. In fact, five major genomic innovations were included with four of those taking the top spots. Each of these five innovations involved some aspect of genome sequencing or genome editing, consistent with my comments about CRISPR on the previous slide. And a final year-end accolade was given by Think Progress, an American political news program. Now for some reason, Think Progress named the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Program as one of its scientific breakthroughs that quote, prove we're already living in the future. Which, I'm not trying to know what that means, but I think it's pretty cool, so we'll take it. Finally, NHGRI Genome Advances of the Month, since the last council meeting has featured publications examining the complex genetic picture of infertility, challenges faced by women with inherited breast cancer, employing gene editing to protect plants from viruses, yet another CRISPR, soon as my computer catches up, there you go, yet another CRISPR example, and the contributions of DNA looping to cancer. And in terms of genomes in the news, there has always been a number of recently generated genome sequences reported since the last council meeting. So here we go, this is what we've seen since the last council meeting. Edzuka Bean, Ancient Ethiopian Human, Regenerative Flatworm, Przvalski's Horse, Grass, Pineapple, Ancient Wild Ox, Eurasian Vulture, Lingulid Brachyepod, The Tiger Mosquito, The Acorn Worm, Yaktushin Horse, Tartigrade, I heard that, of African cheetah, African turquoise killifish, the California sugar pine, ancient Irish humans, eelgrass, Hawaiian crow, the great tit, the scientific name for which Paris Major, I did look that up, lentil and the much in the news Zika virus, not surprisingly, so that's what has happened since the last council meeting genomics continues to rock. Okay, moving on to our extramural research program and some of those highlights. Before describing the new genome sequencing program, I want to point out that the large-scale genome sequencing analysis centers or L-SAC program wrapped up in October of 2015. Now, since 2012, this program made progress on a number of fronts through both independent projects and large collaborations. The overall sequence production goals are shown here for projects focusing on comparative genomics in orange, cancer, including TCGA in pink, and human genomic variation in disease, including 1000 genomes, the Alzheimer's Disease Research Sequencing Project, T2D genes, the Autism Sequencing Project, and others all lumped together in green. Now, the three centers at Baylor College of Medicine, the Broad Institute and Washington University, collectively published over 600 papers and completed over 200 projects, ranging from individual reference sequences to large collaborations involving thousands of genomes. In total, those three centers generated almost three billion gigabases, that's about three billion billions, of DNA sequence during the 2012 through 2015 interval. Quarterly production figures can be seen on this graph with the green arrow there, indicating the start of the most recent iteration of the program in fiscal year 2012. Now, costs currently set at about $1,500 for a whole human genome sequence, including initial automated analyses through variant calling. Now, this time interval included too many milestones to list, but highlights include the completion of the 1000 Genomes Project, the end of data production for the cancer genome atlas, TCGA, and the full implementation of the Illumina HiSeq X10 systems, with the latter clearly evident by the significantly increased sequence production, beginning in July of 2015. Overall, these accomplishments provide an excellent foundation for the next phase of the genome sequencing program, which I'm going to talk about in a few slides. Unpacking a little bit more as some of what the centers did in the previous phase, the 1000 Genomes Project was an international effort to produce a catalog of human genetic variation. The project published its final summary papers in nature on October 1st. The final papers included a global reference for human genetic variation and an integrated map of structural variation in 2,504 human genomes. These publications were highlighted on the cover of nature, as well as in an editorial and in the news and views piece. In the end, the 1000 Genomes Project identified and cataloged more than 88 million variants in the genome of over 2,500 people from 26 populations. Together, these reflect greater than 99% of common human genomic variants. Another signature project, the Cancer Genome Atlas, or TCGA, is a large coordinated effort to better understand the molecular basis of cancer. Data production involving over 10,000 tumor normal pairs has been completed and TCGA is currently focusing on data analysis and manuscript writing as the project near its completion in 2016. For each of the over 30 cancer types, the TCGA network has published a comprehensive integrated account of sequence and mutation analysis, also copy number variation and gene and microRNA expression as well as promoter methylation. In recent months, TCGA papers that came out focused on primary prostate cancer and papillary renal cell carcinoma. These were published in October and November and in Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine respectively. These papers provide new insights into classification and treatment for these tumors in a clinical setting. And then another highlight that's worth noting about TCGA. I reported to you back in May of last year that TCGA was nominated as a finalist for the 2015 Samuel J. Hyman Service to America Medal, nicknamed The Sammies. Well, I'm happy to report that the TCGA project team won the People's Choice Award during the 2015 Service to America Award Ceremony. Dr. Jean-Claude Zangoussin from NCI and Dr. Caroline Hutter from NHGRI shown here, they were the leads for the TCGA project and they were presented this distinguished award at a banquet in October. Congratulations to both of them and the entire TCGA team. Another part of our genome sequencing program, the Centers for Mendelian Genomics, aims to find as many causal genes from Mendelian conditions as possible and to enable the broader scientific research community to ultimately discover all causal genes. Now, since December of 2011, the Centers have generated and analyzed over 20,000 exome sequences, leading to the discovery of over 1,600 genes that are highly likely to be causal from Mendelian conditions that the Centers have studied. In the process of making these discoveries, the Centers gained a more comprehensive understanding of what it will take to find all the causal genes for all Mendelian conditions, making major innovations in areas such as sample accrual, collaboration establishment, study design, genome sequencing, and data analysis. Now, many of these discoveries and innovations are reported in the now over 200 publications that have come out to date. The Centers also disseminated relevant tools such as FinoDB for phenotype collection, storage, and analysis, Gene Matcher for enabling researchers interested in the same genes to quickly connect with one another in various data analysis methods. Data, we're also shared in several ways. Sequence variants and phenotypes were deposited in DBGaP, also realizing that causal gene information would be of high value for other researchers. Last year, the Centers started sharing the names of candidate causal genes pre-publication. So now moving on to our new genome sequencing program. As all of you are aware, we take very seriously the configuration and productivity of our well-known genome sequencing program. And at the end of the last grant period approach, we conducted a rigorous strategic planning process to decide how best to position this important component of the institute's extramural portfolio. Recall that we have a major program evaluation meeting that took place in July of 2014 that focused on future opportunities for large-scale human genome sequencing. And then the rest of 2014 and all of 2015 brought a number of key steps for implementing the next phase of the genome sequencing program. Many of which involved this council. Well, after these many important steps, we're happy to finally be able to announce the start of the new genome sequencing program on an event that was delayed the start of because of budgetary uncertainties. But we now have clarity on exactly how this will proceed. So let me summarize this for you. The largest component of the new genome sequencing program, the Centers for Common Disease Genomics, or CCDGs, will seek to undertake comprehensive rare variant studies for several common complex diseases. The initial focus of these centers will be on cardiovascular diseases, such as early onset myocardial infarction and hemorrhagic stroke, and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism. The program will accomplish their initial goals by sequencing the genomes of about 37,000 individuals. Program grantees are already working to identify additional disease areas, including autoimmune inflammatory diseases and bone diseases. Over the coming months, NHGRI will be assessing opportunities to identify additional disease areas to potentially tackle. Now, the four centers for common disease genomics are located at the Broad Institute, Washington University in St. Louis, Baylor College of Medicine, and the New York Genome Center. NHGRI will be contributing about $240 million over four years, and NHLBI will be contributing about $20 million over the same period. NHLBI's contributions will serve to coordinate our program with their top-med genome sequencing effort. We also recently announced the next phase for the Centers for Mendelian Genomics, which will now consist of four centers. The Center at the Broad Institute is new to this program. The three renewing centers at the University of Washington in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine. These centers will receive a total of $49 million, with $40 million coming from NHGRI, $8 million coming from NHLBI, and $1 million from NEI all over four years. And finally, we announced the establishment of a genome sequencing program coordinating center, which was awarded to Rutgers University. The coordinating center will be funded at $4 million total over four years. So that's our newly configured genome sequencing program. Meanwhile, the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research, or CSER program, focuses on the integration of genome sequencing into the clinical workflow, including the generation interpretation and clinical reporting of genomic information. CSER has now enrolled over 4,200 adults and over 1,000 children, with over 4,000 of those resulting in the generation of germline genome sequence data and over 600 with tumor genome sequence data. In total, CSER has thus far produced 244 publications, 13 of which reflect working group publications. For example, a special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics was published in the fall of 2015 with several articles authored by CSER investigators. The special issue focused on ethical, legal, and social implications issues involved in the return of genomic results and incidental findings to family members, including after the death of a research participant. The CSER tumor working group recently published a commentary highlighting points for clinical laboratories and physicians to consider when ordering tumor-only genome sequencing. And the University of Michigan CSER site recently published an analysis integrating tumor DNA and RNA, as well as germline DNA sequence data in 91 pediatric patients with rare relapse or refractory cancer. They found that 46% had actionable germline or somatic findings that could influence their clinical management, with RNA sequence data accounting for about 25, about 20% of the actionable findings. Finally, in September 2015, a CSER and beyond program evaluation meeting was held to review the accomplishments of the CSER program and to prioritize research opportunities of relevance for potential future research program focusing on clinical genome sequencing. The report from that workshop is available on NHGRI's website, genome.gov. And council member Dr. Dan Rodin will give a presentation about this meeting later in the open session, and that'll be followed by presentations of two concept clearances by Dr. Lucia Hendoor. Recall that the genome sequencing informatics tools for GSIT program, also known as iSeq tools, has had the mission to democratize genome analysis by providing researcher friendly sequence analysis tools to users outside of large genome centers. This program was formerly part of our larger genome sequencing program. The GSIT program has relied on three approaches, robust software engineering to make tools reliable and easy to use, social engineering to engage users to support documentation and outreach and use of innovative technology such as the cloud and fast intuitive app frameworks. While the program is ending, but a good foundation has been laid for the future. The six completed iSeq tools projects include some of the most recognized genome analysis toolkits such as GATK and GotCloud. Others such as genome stripe or strip have gained rapid adoption in the community. Pindel has been extended to predict complex indels. The iOBIOS apps have been built into the ICGC data portal and are now being used by busy clinicians. And SG advisor has been used to solve cases of Mendelian diseases such as for the examples shown here. Meanwhile, NHGRI's technology development program has active requests for applications or RFAs and program announcements or PARs that are worth highlighting. RFAs for novel nucleic acid sequencing technology development for both DNA and direct RNA sequencing were released yielding the first round of applications that are now under review and will be considered by this council in May. A direct to phase two SBIR solicitation was recently added to this set of announcements. There are also upcoming application due dates in July of this year and in June of 2017. PARs for novel genome technology development were released yielding the first round of applications that are now under review and will be considered by this council in September. There are also upcoming application due dates in October of 2016 and October of 2017. Moving on to encode the encyclopedia of DNA elements. The goal of this project is to create catalogs of all functional elements in the human and mouse genomes and to make those catalogs available as a resource to the biomedical research community. The encode project regularly engages in outreach activities to help a broad range of scientists use encode resources. For example, the second encode users meeting will take place in June, modeled after the highly successful 2015 meeting. At that meeting, consortium members will lead interactive tutorials demonstrating how to access encode data, tools and resources. We'll also run encode pipelines that uniformly process data and perform integrative analyses of encode data. In addition, a panel of distinguished researchers not involved in encode will explain how encode resources are enabling their work. For more details, visit encode2016.org. Encode consortium members are also leading workshops at the upcoming Keystone Chromatin and Epigenetics meeting and the Society of Toxicology meeting. In a similar workshop at the 2015 ASHG meeting, attracted a sellout crowd. Encode data continues to be heavily used. There are now more than 1,300 community publications that's shown in the pink line from groups without encode funding but who used encode data for their published work. And encode consortium members have themselves now published more than 500 publications and that's reflected by the green light. Aiming to build on the success of the encode project, NHGRI has released five funding opportunity announcements or FOAs in functional genomics. All of which will be organized under the general encode umbrella. These FOAs were developed based on recommendations from a program review workshop that NHGRI convened in spring of 2015 and will support functional genomics projects with a variety of goals including expanding the catalog of candidate functional elements through high throughput mapping in the human and mouse genomes, developing generalizable approaches for characterizing the role of candidate functional elements in specific biological context, developing new computational approaches for analyzing encode data, making encode data readily available to the research community through coordinated data management activities and supporting the centralized data analysis needs for the next phase of encode including developing updated and refined versions of the encode encyclopedia. The key dates associated with these FOAs are shown here. Applications are due on March 21st with scientific merit review in June, council review in October and the earliest project start dates in December. The Electronic Medical Records and Genomics or EMERGE Network, which recently entered its third phase, conducts genomic discovery and clinical implementation research by leveraging data from large biorepositories linked to electronic medical records. A paper outlining findings by EMERGE investigators was recently published in JAMA along with an associated editorial. The study found a low concordance in design and designating arrhythmia related genes, specifically the SCN5A and KCNH2 genes, variants in those genes and figuring out designating those variants as pathogenic across different genetic testing laboratories. The study also reported no significant association between the punitive pathogenic variants and cardio arrhythmia disorders in an unselected population. Meanwhile, the EMERGE Consent Education Regulation and Consultation or CERC working group was established to survey 90,000 individuals on their perspective about a broad consent and data sharing. Systematic literature review was completed by this working group to prepare for the survey and the findings from that literature review were recently published in genetics and medicine. In addition, Dr. Paul Harris, an EMERGE investigator from Vanderbilt University was recently honored with the American Medical Informatics Association, Don A.B. Lindberg, Award for Innovation in Informatics, which recognized an individual who exemplifies Dr. Lindberg's continuous commitment to the field. Dr. Harris created REDCAP, a research data collection and management software platform that has seen widespread adoption by over 1,600 academic and non-profit institutions in 92 countries. He also created and runs the National Program Research Match, which is designated to match volunteers wishing to volunteer for studies and scientists recruiting participants for research at any clinical and translational science award or CTSA institution. The research match program is currently serving about 83,000 volunteers and 3,200 researchers across 111 academic institutions. The Phoenix project, which aims to produce an online resource of standard measures for capturing data on common diseases, phenotypic traits, and environmental exposures, continues to add more features and expand its users base. This past October, version 13 of the Phoenix toolkit was released and includes a redesigned webpage, making it easier for researchers to find the standard measures and supporting material relevant for their research studies. Phoenix is assembling a new expert working group to identify valid low burden measures for the pregnancy research domain, and they expect to add these measures to the toolkit by late February of this, or late fall, I'm sorry, fall of this year. Lastly, use of the Phoenix toolkit continues to rise. The graph on the left shows the cumulative growth of Phoenix users. Phoenix recently surpassed its 2,000th registered user and has over 5,000 my toolkit reports downloaded. The graph on the right shows that by the end of 2015, there were 144 NIH funding opportunity announcements, or FOAs, that encourage or require the use of Phoenix measures. This demonstrates the growing number of NIH institutes and centers that recognize the value of capturing data with standard methods to facilitate data integration and cross-study analysis. The clinical genome resource, or ClinGen, which aims to build an authoritative central resource that defines the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research, has just entered its third year of funding. We are pleased to report that version one of ClinGen's clinical validity framework has been finalized. This framework defines the criteria needed to assess the clinical validity of a disease gene pair and quantifies the strength of the evidence supporting or refuting the relationship. For example, the ClinGen hereditary cancer working group used this framework and found that 50% of genes in common clinical testing panels for pancreatic cancer demonstrate only limited evidence for association with the disease. Two collaborative activities to note are that ClinGen is establishing a relationship with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, or GA4GH, to align our efforts in somatic cancer variation and also second, participated in a productive meeting with the Wellcome Trust last week as they just launched the Translational Genomics Initiative, a project with many points of synergy with ClinGen. Lastly, there have been a number of ClinGen publications recently, including papers envisioning the role of ClinGen in precision medicine and the integration of ClinGen with electronic health record systems. The implementing genomics in practice, or IGNITE Network, strives to develop methods of incorporating genomic information into medical care and to promote the effective use of genomics in various health care settings. This year, IGNITE is pleased to announce that its first network-wide paper, entitled the IGNITE Network, a model for genomic medicine implementation of research, was published in BMC Medical Genomics in January. This paper describes the organization, methods, and goals of the entire IGNITE network and of each member project. The IGNITE toolkit is another network-wide project that has generated much excitement and anticipation throughout the program. Intended as a one-stop shop for genomic medicine, the toolkit is an interactive data repository intended to assist researchers and health care institutions in the implementation of genomic medicine. A prototype of the site was released in January. And last, but not least, in the extramural program, the newborn sequencing and genomic medicine public health, or NSITE program, is exploring in a limited but deliberative manner the implications, challenges, and opportunities associated with the possible use of genomic sequence information for the care of newborns. Recently, the four NSITE groups held a public webinar at which key personnel from each discussed their progress to date, and video and slides from the presentations can be found on the NHRI NSITE webpage shown here. Okay, moving on then to broader NIH common fund and trans-NIH initiatives. The integrative human microbiome project, or IHMP, which is in phase two, basically represents phase two of the human microbiome project, is now entering its third year. The third annual IHMP consortium meeting will be held in June in Bethesda, and this is an open meeting. As in previous years, the three IHMP projects will be presenting their work at landmark meetings in 2016. The first will be the Keystone Symposium in Genomics and Personalized Medicine in February, and the second will be at the Sixth International Human Microbiome Consortium Congress in November. Now, as I reported at the last council meeting, a fast-track action committee on mapping the microbiome was chartered by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, with the aims of completing a portfolio analysis of human, animal, and environment-associated microbiome research support across the federal government and of preparing a report for the National Science and Technology Council. While the human microbiome project was really the catalyst for the formation of this committee. The microbiome research portfolio analysis covered fiscal years 2012 through 2014, and included 14 federal agencies. The committee identified a total of $922 million in intramural and extramural microbiome research funding. NIH ended up, their funding comprised about 59% of this total. More information on this analysis can be found in the final report which was released in November. In addition, a paper summarizing the portfolio analysis was published in the inaugural issue of Nature Microbiology in January, and a second paper which focuses on the NIH investment in this emerging field is currently being prepared. The Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Project, or COMP2, was launched in 2011 with the goal of producing and phenotyping 2,500 mouse knockout strains over five years. The project is on track to meet its goal in the fall of 2016. The project was approved for continuation by the NIH Common Fund, and thus will proceed with a second five years of support achieving the maximum 10-year Common Fund Project lifespan. The NIH Common Fund will be matching the funds provided by other NIH institutes and centers and offices, and in total there'll be 18 institute centers and offices contributing funds to the next phase of the program for a total of roughly $100 million of funding over the next five years. Funding opportunity announcements, or FOAs, for the next phase of COMP2 were published in November, and applications were received in December, and the review of these applications will be conducted in March, and a funding plan will be discussed with this council at the main meeting. The program plans to continue broad-based phenotyping of knockout mice in collaboration with our international partners through the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, or IMPC. Another Common Fund project, H3Africa, and the central goal of the Human Heredity in Health in Africa, or H3Africa initiative, is to develop a sustainable and collaborative African genetics and genomics research enterprise. Last October, H3Africa held an ancillary session at the 2015 American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG, annual meeting, in which six H3Africa PIs and working group chairs presented to a full room. Immediately following that gathering, the seventh H3Africa consortium meeting was held here in DC, and in addition to the usual closed sessions for the consortium meeting, H3Africa also hosted a full day of PI presentations at NIH for a combined audience of well over 300 videocast and live viewers. And capitalizing on the opportunity to share lessons learned between H3Africa and other NIH groups, several subject area meetings were held, such as a very fruitful trans-NIH H3Africa community engagement workshop, which I'll see things today about a little bit later. And you're gonna hear more about H3Africa progress and plans for a renewal in a presentation by Jen Troyer later in the open session. Well, the NIH Common Fund undiagnosed diseases network, or UDN, aims to improve the level of diagnosis and care for patients with undiagnosed diseases, facilitate research into the etiology of these diseases, and create an integrated and collaborative research community to identify and share improved options for optimal patient management. This September, the UDN added three new cores, a model organism screening center at Baylor College of Medicine with the University of Oregon, a metabolomics core at the Tel Pacific Northwest Laboratories with Oregon Health and Science University, and a central biorepository at Vanderbilt University. The UDN is now accepting patients at all seven UDN clinical sites across the nation to apply access the UDN gateway by clicking on the apply button which is located on all the UDN web pages. New to the Common Fund, the Gabriela Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Act was passed by Congress in March of 2014 and signed into law by President Obama in April of 2014. This act eliminated taxpayer financing of political conventions repurposing those funds for a 10-year pediatric research initiative. The $12.6 million per year for 10 years are now designated for an NIH Common Fund program referred to as Kids First. The program aims to develop a data resource for the pediatric research community of well-curated clinical and genome sequence data with easy access and a focus on cancer with inherited basis and on relapse and treatment-resistant tumors, as well as on structural birth defects. Production of whole genome sequences from up to 6,000 samples is underway through a supplement to two of the NHGRI genome sequencing program centers for studies of Ewing sarcoma, drug-resistant pediatric osteosarcoma, cleft lip and palate, syndrome and cranial disinnovation disorders, congenital heart defects, congenital diaphragmatic hernia and disorders of sex development. Last month, the program released another funding opportunity announcement for genome sequencing center or centers that calls for applications by groups who will sequence additional samples. The generated data will become part of a larger data resource and the deadline for applications is April 1st. Now, as discussed at several recent council meetings, NIH has been heavily involved in implementing the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative for PMI. NIH's fiscal year 2016 budget includes $70 million for the National Cancer Institute to lead efforts in cancer genomics as part of PMI for oncology, as well as an additional $130 million to the NIH to build a national longitudinal research cohort of one million or more volunteers through the PMI cohort program. NIH has been doing an excellent job of capturing and disseminating information about the PMI cohort program, planning activities in particular via this dedicated webpage. And I would urge you to visit this site to get the latest information since it will continue to be the place to go for information on meetings, funding opportunities, and so forth. In fact, the first set of funding opportunities for the PMI cohort program was announced in November and these opportunities are summarized in the table shown here. The first two funding opportunities will use something called Other Transaction Authority or OTA to develop a pilot program to inform creation of the direct volunteer enrollment for the cohort as well as to establish a communication infrastructure. OTA has been used by some other government agencies and is designed to obtain cutting edge technology with a high degree of flexibility often from non-traditional sources. Applications have already been received for these two opportunities with awards expected to be made this month. The last four funding opportunities will be traditional cooperative agreements designed to build the infrastructure for the PMI cohort program, including a biobank coordinating center, network for healthcare provider organizations and participant mobile technologies. Applications for these are due this month with awards expected this summer. Also in November, Dr. Francis Collins announced the establishment of the PMI cohort program advisory panel, the roster for which is shown here. Note that the panel includes council member Dr. Lon Carden and former council member Dr. David Williams. Panel members will provide ongoing guidance and oversight of the PMI cohort contributing significant to the evolution of the program's vision, scientific and clinical goals as well as operations. Additional members will be named over time. And finally, NIH launched a search for a permanent PMI director. Applications were due in December with the search process now proceeding in earnest. In December, NIH announced seven requests for applications to support the environmental influences on child health outcomes or ECHO program. Now this seven year initiative is designed to investigate the longitudinal impact of prenatal, perinatal and postnatal environmental exposures on pediatric health outcomes with high public health impact. While the goals of ECHO are consistent with those of the former National Children's Study, the approach is different. ECHO will support multiple synergistic longitudinal studies using existing study populations to investigate environmental exposures, including physical, chemical, biological, social, behavioral, natural and built environments on child health and development. The seven funding announcements are listed here. The studies will focus on four key pediatric outcome areas that have a high public health impact, upper and lower airway, obesity, pre, peri and postnatal outcomes, and neurodevelopment. The studies will share standardized core data elements managed by a central coordinating center and associated data analysis center. Applications for these funding announcements are all due on Friday, April 15th, a seemingly popular date for federal agencies. And that's why I wanted to tell you about Common Fund and TransNIH. So moving on to our division of policy, communications and education. We start with the Inner Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education in Genomics, or ISCC. And this group held their fifth day long in-person meeting in January. Recall that the ISCC was formed following Council's Genomic Medicine Working Group's January 2013 meeting with a charge to enhance the practice of genomic medicine through the sharing of educational approaches and joint identification of educational needs. The theme for this meeting was implementation of practical education strategies. The participants heard from Jeanette McCarthy, Educator and Editor of Genome Magazine, Samuel Johnson from Kaiser Permanente, and Michael Murray from Geisinger. Jeffrey Weitzel described his 15-year experience with an NIH-funded provider education program in cancer genomics at City of Hope. And a new voice, the patients, was added to the meeting with a thought-provoking presentation by the founder of the Lynch Syndrome Advocacy Group alive and kicking. New areas of discussion revealed potential roles of international partnership and collaboration with ISCC. Attendees stated their appreciation of the strong consensus and enthusiasm for collaborative education using the diversity approaches. The speaker slides are available on the meeting website. Meanwhile, a collaborative effort spearheaded by Dr. Jean Jenkins of the NHGRI Genomic Healthcare Branch, Dr. Kathy Calzone of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Patricia Grady, who's the director of the National Institute for Nursing Research or NINR, has won an International Award for Nursing Excellence for the Best of Journal of Nursing Scholarship in World Health. The award recognizes the 2013 publication shown here, a blueprint for genomic nursing science authored by the Genomic Nursing State of the Science Panel convened through this collaboration. The winning article kickstarted discussion of research opportunities that build the evidence needed for integration of genomics into nursing practice and regulation and provided a framework for moving nursing science forward to address research gaps. Recommendations included expanding the capacity of nurse scientists to conduct genomics research, to activate the blueprint described in the paper, the NIH team convened a follow-up meeting in August of 2014 at which working group formed to develop a genome research consortium, identify common data elements for inclusion in nursing research, and examine nurse scientist education and training efforts. And to achieve the aims delineated in the genomic nursing science blueprint quickly and efficiently, the NHGRI NINR staff plan a web-based platform to provide access to strategies and resources to further the research agenda. Now, as discussed at the last council meeting, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the notice of proposed rulemaking or NPRM to revise the common rule. Common rule is a set of regulations for the Department of Health and Human Services and 16 other federal agencies governing the protection of human subjects and research. Now, NHGRI's policy and program analysis branch has created a web-based resource for the community located on genome.gov that summarizes the proposed changes included in the NPRM that are relevant for genomics research, including proposed changes to the treatment of biospecimens and form consent, privacy safeguards, and IRB review. Now, the resource also contains charts and graphics to clarify the more complex proposals, including proposals for changing the definition of a human subject and those for redefining exclusions and exemptions from the rule. The public comment period for the NPRM was 120 days and closed last month. More than 2,100 comments were submitted and can be viewed online at the website regulations.gov. We hope this new resource will be useful to the genomics community as this regulatory process proceeds and we welcome any questions or feedback on the information provided or on the proposed rule. Now, the NHGRI History of Genomics program within the Institute's Communications and Public Liaison branch continues to conduct oral history interviews with key staff and members of the genomics research community. To date, 30 such oral histories have been completed and the raw video footage is in the process of being prepared for posting on our Genome TV channel of YouTube. And as I mentioned earlier in my director's report, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Human Genome Project, the NHGRI History of Genomics program is hosting a seminar series entitled A Quarter Century After the Human Genome Project's Launch, Lessons Beyond the Base Paris. And the first of the six planned sessions was held in December and featured a panel discussion involving doctors Alka Jordan and Mark Geyer that I moderated, a photo of which is shown on the right. The second of the series was a lecture by Dr. Maynard Olson that occurred just a couple of weeks ago and the remaining four talks will feature doctors Ewan Burney, Bob Cook-Degan, Mark Omara, and David Bentley. Each of the distinguished speakers also participates in an oral history interview while they're at the NIH and as is our usual routine, all of these talks are being videotaped and posted on our Genome TV channel of YouTube. Now, recall that each year NHGRI celebrates DNA Day and this year our Education and Community Involvement Branch and our Communications and Public Liaison Branch have partnered to expand the reach of our DNA Day programming. Efforts to support such an expansion include an updated National DNA Day logo and an overhaul of the NHGRI DNA Day web pages including a map highlighting DNA Day activities across the United States, an extensive page highlighting genetics education resources and the creation of a toolkit to assist other organizations with their DNA Day event planning, all of which is available beginning today on genome.gov. Also in the works are a Twitter chat and a week long Ask Me Anything series hosted on the website Reddit which will involve the efforts of prominent genomics researchers. Now, on April 25th, the official National DNA Day, NHGRI will host Dr. Eric Spana from Duke University at our inaugural National DNA Day lecture for the NIH community. And his lecture will focus on communicating science to students and the public in creative and relevant ways. Also, as I mentioned earlier, in October, NHGRI's Education and Community Involvement Branch in conjunction with the Human Heredity in Health and H3Africa Consortium hosted a workshop at NIH on effective strategies and practices for engaging with communities around biomedical research. This gathering brought together H3Africa researchers and staff involved in community engagement activities with NIH researchers and staff who work collaboratively with communities underrepresented in biomedical research. The workshop provided a forum to discuss effective community engagement strategies and practices in the United States and internationally. Over the course of the day's presentations and conversations, several themes and key messages emerged, including ways to increase community participation and involvement, the need for research, on the evaluation of effective strategies to facilitate community engagement, understanding different consent models and advisory boards, and the challenges related to sustaining community efforts. And finally, moving on to our NHGRI Smithsonian Exhibition, Genome Unlocking Wives Code, the exhibition continues to travel across North America. On January 23rd, the exhibition opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at Discovery World and in May, the exhibition will travel to Salt Lake City and then later on to Wichita, Kansas to close out 2016. The first stop in 2017 will be at the Peoria Riverfront Museum in Peoria, Illinois. While the exhibition is in these cities, NHGRI staff are partnering with the museums and science centers on programs, docent training and special community days. Please continue to check the exhibition's website, unlockinglightscode.org and follow it on social media for the most up-to-date program information. Now, as an example, NHGRI staff are partnering with the museums and science centers who are hosting our Genomics Exhibition Development Support Community Focus programming. In November, the Native American Youth and Family Center, together with NHGRI and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, hosted a family night at the Genome Unlocking Lives Code exhibition. The event was attended by nearly 250 American Indian and Alaska Native people in the Portland area and offered participants the opportunity to explore the museum, experience the exhibition and hear from a Native storyteller about ancestry, origins, and identity. In addition to the family night, the Native American Youth and Family Center brought students from their school and after-school programs to the exhibition during the day as part of the curriculum on genetics. And lastly, in November, a second interactive to support the Genomics Exhibition debuted on the exhibition's website, unlockinglightscode.org. Called In and Beyond Africa, this is an online interactive that allows users to learn about various aspects of human origins and follow a timeline of human migrations out of Africa. This addition significantly expands upon the content found within the exhibition itself. And through gaming, visitors can learn about prehistoric toolmaking, the genetic basis of human skin pigmentation, genetic facts about the domestication of crops and animals, and genomics projects about the life of the Neolithic mummy, Otsi. The interactive also includes an activity entitled Deep Future, with which users can record their predictions about human evolution. This is a fun learning activity and I encourage you to spend a few minutes taking a look at this new interactive website. And lastly, moving on to the NHGRI Intramural Program, and starting with its leader, Dr. Dan Kastner, NHGRI Scientific Director, who you'll be hearing from shortly, received the 2015 Thomas A. Waldman Award for Excellence in Human Immunology. This award is given to an immunologist, cell biologist who has made significant contributions directly or indirectly to the understanding of primary immunodeficiency diseases. Congratulations, Dan. And then Dan's deputy, also was received in honor, the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston, named Dr. Paul Lu, NHGRI's Deputy Scientific Director. It's 2015 Distinguished Alumnus. Dr. Lu, who also heads the Intramural Research Programs Oncogenesis and Development Section, was recognized for his contributions to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of leukemia and for the development of targeted treatment. And as usual, it's been a productive few months for the NHGRI Intramural Research Program, just giving you a few highlights. Dr. Pam Schwartzberg and a research group published an important study about T-cell factor one, a transcription factor that is essential for the creation and persistence of disease-fighting antibodies. Their findings published last September in cell reports may help shed light on pathways important for the development of vaccines and immune therapies targeting viral infections. Dr. Amanda Umbrella and colleagues have identified a new childhood onset disorder that they have named haphalinsufficiency of A20. The disease results from a variant of a gene that regulates how the immune system responds to inflammation, infection, and trauma, and their findings were published in the December issue of Nature Genetics. And in yet another highlight for him, Dr. Dan Caster and colleagues have discovered genomic variants that increase the risk for a potentially life-threatening childhood disease characterized by persistent joint swelling, pain, and stiffness, known as systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis. And that recently reported findings were published in the Proceedings and National Academy of Sciences' early edition. And that is the end of my director's report, but before ending, I just wanna say as always, something about my monthly newsletter and put in a plug for it. This monthly email update called the Genomics Landscape can be easily subscribed to by going to the URL shown here and then searching for NHGRI landscape. I should note that our total external subscription base for the genomics landscape is approaching the 1,000 mark. So if you'd please talk to your friends, relatives, and neighbors and have them subscribe so we could push me over 1,000 mark, it'll make the Institute feel good. And finally, as always, a personal note to thank all the folks, many sitting in the back of this room contributed to the slides and provided copious amounts of information summarized in the last hour or so. It is a group effort and without their help, I could never pull together all this information for a summary to provide to you. Also a special thanks to the NHGRI Communications Group who are mostly sitting on the other side of the wall behind me for not only pulling together stuff on the web, but also for the live video cast and what will eventually be the web archive and all the video archive of the Open Session of Council. And finally and usual special thanks to Chris Sweaterstrand who serves as the ringleader for pulling together all this material and pulling together this final PowerPoint presentation. Chris is shown here in a photo that we took at the first installment of the History of Genomics seminar series that I told you about earlier that included Drs. Elka Jordan and Mark Geiger, both former deputy directors of the Institute. So thank you, Chris, for your contributions and I will stop there and happily take any questions.