 Good morning everyone, and I'm not Eric Green. I'm Alan Guttmacher, the acting director of NHGRI, but I've hijacked the podium from Eric for a couple of minutes because I wanted to bring you up to date on what's been happening with the search for a permanent director of NHGRI. Some of you are not aware of this. My wife is keenly aware that it's been 15 months and 16 days since we were deserted by some tall geneticist who went off to unemployment, and I've sort of lost track of him since then. I'm not sure what he's doing now, and sometime after that we launched the search for a new director of NHGRI, and I can tell you that there were lots of well-qualified applicants for that position. There was a search committee, which you'll hear a little bit more about in a moment, that did a very good job, and then the search was actually hijacked in a new direction for NIH. It has been a tradition at the NIH, and I think many people assume this was written someplace in the federal code, if not the Constitution, that the only people not allowed to interact at all with the candidates to be the director of the institute were the very people who worked at that institute. Therefore, the institute itself would have no idea about who these possible leaders might be, and more importantly, perhaps, the new leaders might have no insights about who exactly this rabble that they might have to end up working with. So we protested that to Building One, and I think as part of the new administration of Building One, that fell on very receptive ears, and in fact, leadership from NHGRI was invited to meet with the finalists for this position, and I can tell you, having met with them myself, that it really was, that we clearly had outstanding candidates to do this. And I'm going to now go off the stage and introduce Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, who will take us a little further with this story. Well, it's great to be here in Gettysburg in the genome living room for this grand moment. So, yes, a search process was vigorously undertaken, and the chairs of the search committee, Tom Insel and Jeremy Berg, and a really remarkable roster of experts from the extramural scientific community and a few others from NIH did a bang-up job of identifying really attractive, appealing, visionary candidates, and some 25 applications were received and various interviews were conducted and a short list was then handed to me about six weeks ago. That then led to careful interviews of the candidates and an estimate of what their particular potential would be to lead the genome institute into the future, and that was an inspiring group, to be sure. I should say, if you didn't already know, that Alan Gutmacher decided not to apply for this position, so he was not in that particular list. But before going any further here with an announcement about what's about to happen, I think we should all give Alan a recognition of thanks for his assistance and leadership. Yeah. So, this was indeed a tough decision because candidates were indeed very competitive and the vision they put forward actually was quite inspiring in every single situation. But as the dust began to settle, I had to make a decision, and I am happy to say I've reached that, and I have made the offer of the leadership of the genome institute to the chosen candidate, and he has accepted, and as of just about an hour ago, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dean Sibelius, has signed off on the appointment, so I am now authorized to tell you that the next director of the National Human Genome Research Institute will appropriately be sensitive to environmental concerns because he will lead a green revolution. I don't think the mic is on. There we go. Now, please sit down. You guys are going to pressure me to actually do a good job. And thank goodness I can't see anything up here because we'd be a little overwhelming. So let me start out by expressing my overwhelming thanks to Francis for once again giving me an opportunity to assume a major leadership position at NHGRI. Francis, for 15 years I watched you masterfully serve as NHGRI's director. You set a standard of excellence that will be hard to match but one that I have every intention of emulating. Almost precisely seven years ago, ironically at this venue, in Gettysburg, you announced my appointment as the new NHGRI scientific director. It was a joy and pleasure to work closely with you for six years while you were the director and I am now profoundly excited to now serve as one of your institute directors as we endeavor to make you the most successful NIH director ever. I would also want to tell you I'm going to keep my comments short right now in part because we have a busy retreat and in part because there's other venues for me to provide more details about what lies ahead for NHGRI but there are a few things that I think really need to be said now. The first one echoes what Francis said but having worked closely with Alan for the intervening months I really want to express my own strongest possible thank you to Alan who has done nothing short of a spectacular job as acting director for NHGRI for the last 15 months. I hope all of you realize how fortunate we have been to have Alan not only serve as our acting director but to do so in such an effective way. Alan, I know I speak for the entire institute and expressing a profound thanks for your leadership and for your contributions. Second, I really want to give a heartfelt thanks to many colleagues who I've worked closely with over the past seven years as a scientific director starting with Mark Geyer who's not here right now, Janice Mulaney who's in the front row who along with Alan and myself have made the force that have kept NHGRI moving at its usual 70 miles an hour speed during this interim period. On the intramural side, I have my immediate thanks go out to my branch chiefs, clinical director, deputy scientific director who have really helped make the NHGRI program second to none at the NIH and of course to all the rest of the intramural program many of you seated here which I'm just so proud of starting with the entire NHGRI intramural faculty to Ellen Rolfes and her outstanding administrative team to the immediate office of the scientific director and then of course my own branch, the genome technology branch my own lab, the green lab and all the wonderful people that I've worked so closely with at the NIH intramural sequencing center. I have had the best job on earth for the past seven years leading this amazing group of over 500 people that are all things intramural and also providing me an opportunity to continue to be an active genomics researcher. But let me be very clear, I am not going very far. In fact, I will still be interested in all things intramural even as the NHGRI director and I will do everything in my power to facilitate intramural's continued successes. At the same time, let me express my genuine excitement in broadening my scope to include all the rest of NHGRI the office of the director, the division of extramural research. I already consider ODDR as part of the larger NHGRI family that I'm a member and I'm looking forward to building even stronger relationships and to working closely with all of you. I am signing up to be the director of all of NHGRI and while I've lived on the intramural side for the last 15 years, I have every intention of immersing myself in all parts of this spectacular institute in the coming weeks and months. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to continue to be provided with opportunities within NHGRI and I'm truly convinced that all of NHGRI will continue to be profoundly successful and I look forward to working with each and every one of you to make that vision a reality. And finally, and any of you know me, let me be very clear about one other fact. My new gig does not start until December 1 and as of today, I am still the scientific director and that means my top priority is to make this retreat unbelievably successful so let's quickly go on to the regularly scheduled program. I flip.