 Well, thank you, Rudy. I would also like to reiterate the fact that the open session is being webcast live. That includes my director's report. I also want to welcome all of you who are joining us remotely through this webcast. The open session also, all the presentations in the open session do include documents and other elements that we post on our website, genome.gov, as a resource associated with the open session. That includes my director's report, and for those who are new to council meetings, let me just point out that we establish through quite a bit of effort an electronic resource that gets associated with each of my director reports. It's a sort of analogous to a supplemental material section of a published paper. This resource can be accessed at the URL that's shown here. The slides that I'll show during my director's report are also available electronically at this site. You can see them either as a PDF file or as actual PowerPoint file itself. When there's documents or other relevant websites associated with a particular slide, you'll find a document number in the bottom right-hand corner of the slide. That document number then references materials that can be accessed and even downloaded in many cases from this web page. This web page and all the associated documents associated with it will be permanently archived on our website, genome.gov, as a historic record of this director's report. Now there'll be other presentations during the open session of this council meeting. My director's report is tailored around these presentations, and I won't be discussing in detail topics that others are going to cover. Starting immediately after my director's report, Larry Tabak, who's NIH's principal deputy director, will be here to give an update on the Next Generation Researchers Initiative. Then after lunch, we're going to have a series of reports. The first will be from Rex Chisholm, who will provide an update on the Emerge Network. The second will be from Carolyn Hutter, who will discuss the cancer genome atlas, TCGA, a decade of discovery. Next we'll hear in succession from Wendy Chung, an incoming member of our council, who will talk about the National Academy of Medicine, or NAM, report on evidence framework for genetic testing. Terry Monoglio will then provide a summary of the genomic medicine working group activities in 2017. And then Anastasia Wise, who will provide an update on the end site program. So for the rest of my director's report, I'll be giving an update in each of these categories, the seven, which provide a very nice framework, starting with some general NHGRI updates. The first NHGRI update relates to one of our senior staff members. Long time NHGRI program director, Gene McEwen, will soon retire from federal service. Gene came to NHGRI in 1999, almost 18 years ago, following a career practicing law, teaching, and performing research. At NHGRI she has masterfully managed a grant portfolio within our ethical, legal, and social implications, or LC research program, focusing on legal, regulatory, and public policy issues, including those related to race and genetics, behavioral genetics, and prenatal testing. Gene has been a true LC pioneer, creating and coordinating LC research components within a number of trans-NHGRI and even trans-NIH genomic programs, including the International HapMap Project, 1,000 Genomes, the Human Microbiome Project, and most recently, the Clinical Sequence and Exploratory Research, or CSER Consortium. Gene played a key role in shaping the LC research program and influenced many other NHGRI research efforts. Her vision and leadership will be missed, but she leaves behind a legacy, really representing a vibrant community of LC scholars. We all wish her well in the next phase of her life, which begins in Minneapolis, where she recently relocated. So best wishes to Gene. Please, please stand up, stand up. Under NHGRI's leadership, NIH and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, or ACMG, recently established a fellowship in genomic medicine program management, a two-year opportunity for qualified physicians to acquire credentials and expertise for leading genomic medicine research and implementation programs at the NIH, or at major medical centers, and even other organizations. The goal of this program is to increase the pool of physicians who can manage research and implementation programs in genomic medicine. The fellowship involves working with genomic medicine research and implementation programs within the participating NIH organizations, specifically NHGRI, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the All of Us Research Program, as well as with similar programs at the ACMG. In addition, time is provided for clinical genomic activities at NIH or nearby hospitals, as well as approved electives tailored for each fellow. The first fellow, who you were introduced to by Rudy, Jennifer Krupp, started this month. Now, up to two fellows will be selected each year. Qualified applicants must have graduated from medical or osteopathic school, be a U.S. citizen, and be licensed to practice medicine in the United States. Applications for the 2018 fellowship will be due December 1 with new fellows then beginning in July of 2018. The Genomics and Health Disparities Lecture Series continues this month and into 2018 with three outstanding speakers, Herman Taylor from Morehouse School of Medicine, Richard Cooper from Loyola University Medical School, and Jose Florez from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. These lectures focus on the role that genomics research can have in addressing health disparities and understanding health inequalities. All lectures in this series are broadcast live on NHGRI's Genome TV channel and are available later for replay on the Genomics and Health Disparities program page. The series is co-sponsored by NHGRI, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases, and the Office of Minority Health at the Food and Drug Administration. In this year, I recently expanded discussions about scholarly topics that involve both genomics and health disparities with the creation of a new scientific interest group. This group connects individuals from different disciplines across NIH and the local research community to facilitate discussions about current research and to provide opportunities for professional development, social networking, and community engagement. This year, the interest group has featured the individuals shown here as speakers with quite a diversity of topics covered, such as transplantation, genomics, bioethics, and bioinformatics. On October 11th, in partnership with the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences and the CDC Office of Public Health Genomics, the group will be hosting a public webinar featuring Wiley Burke and Charles Rotimi in a virtual panel discussion entitled Precision Medicine and Health Disparities, The Promise and Perils of Emerging Technologies. Because of the many, many complex issues at the interface between genomics and data science that are increasingly being faced by NHGRI and by this council, I recently established a fourth standing working group of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. The Genomic Data Science Working Group has been charged with providing input to me as NHGRI director and other institute leaders about NHGRI data science programs and issues, as well as relevant programs and issues that arrive at the NIH level, for which NHGRI is frequently called upon for leadership and expertise. The general remit that I just described to you is deliberately broad, with the intent of having the working group poise to consider the full spectrum of data science challenges, from data management to data usage, including policy-related elements, as they relate to all areas of genomics, from basic science to genomic medicine implementation. The initial membership of the working group is shown here with both current and former council members deliberately selected to populate the group. The working group has had two teleconferences since June with more planned for the fall, and we plan to bring summaries and discussion from the working group to the full council as appropriate. Moving on then to some general NIH updates, here's a familiar face. In June, President Trump officially decided to retain Francis Collins as the NIH director, and so he will remain in this important position as part of the Trump administration. Prior to that, he had been, quote, held over from the Obama administration reflecting a more temporary status. NHGRI is, of course, delighted with this development and continued to appreciate the outstanding leadership of NIH that Francis provides. Other NIH leadership changes, Alfred Johnson was recently appointed the new NIH deputy director for management. Since 2006, Dr. Johnson has served as the director of the NIH Office of Research Services, where he planned and directed service programs for public safety, security operations, scientific and regulatory support, and a wide variety of other services that enrich the NIH community. He has held many other scientific and administrative positions since coming to NIH in 1985, and we look forward to continuing to working closely with Alfred in his new role as the deputy director for management. In June, President Trump named Norman or Ned Sharpless to be the new director of the National Cancer Institute, or NCI. Dr. Sharpless was most recently the director of the Linberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Welcome Distinguished Professor in Cancer Research at the University of North Carolina. He is a practicing oncologist, caring for, hold on, gotta make sure I don't get my updates, oh, he's a practicing oncologist caring for patients with leukemia and leads a research group studying the cell cycle and its role in cancer and aging. He earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is not yet known when he will actually start in the NCI director position. David Wilson has been appointed the first director of the NIH Tribal Health Research Office. In this role, Dr. Wilson will bring together representatives from across the NIH to leverage resources and build collaborations to address tribal health concerns. He comes to the NIH from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, where he served as public health advisor and American Indian Alaskan Native Policy Lead. Dr. Wilson has a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from Arizona State University. In other leadership changes, later this fall, Josie Briggs will be leaving her position as director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, or NCCIH. After departing, she will become the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. In addition to serving as NCCIH director for a number of years, Josie contributed her leadership for a number of major NIH efforts, including standing up the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, or NCATS, and also helping with the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative in its early days. Following Josie's departure, and while NIH searches for a new NCCIH director, David Churliffe will serve as the center's acting director. In terms of developments with some of our sister agencies, Scott Gollib was confirmed as the new commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, in May, shortly after our last council meeting. Dr. Gottlieb trained as an internist and previously served as FDA's deputy commissioner under President George W. Bush and as a senior advisor at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Since assuming the position of FDA commissioner, Dr. Gottlieb has worked on a range of issues, including the opioid crisis, the need for digital health strategy, and ways to increase generic drug competition. And then, meanwhile, over at the CDC in July, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price named Brenda Fitzgerald, the 17th director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Dr. Fitzgerald is an obstetrician gynecologist who has been the Georgia Public Health Commissioner since 2011. In that role, she oversaw various state public health programs and directed the state's 18 public health districts and 159 county health departments. And then, after being nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in early August, Dr. Jerome Adams was sworn in as the U.S. Surgeon General on September 5th. Dr. Adams, an anesthesiologist by training, previously served as the Indiana State Health Commissioner. He succeeds Vivek Murtha, who left the post in April. Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent Adams had been serving as acting Surgeon General during this interim period. Back over to the FDA. After 25 years with the FDA, Alberto Guterres, who's director of the Office of In vitro diagnostics and radiological health, will be retiring at the end of this month. This office regulates in-home and laboratory diagnostic tests and also administers the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment, or CLIA. During his tenure as director, Dr. Guterres provided leadership for the agency to publish draft guidelines on demonstrating analytical validity for germline next generation sequencing tests, as well as proposing the use of public genomic variant databases to establish clinical validity of next generation sequencing tests. He also worked extensively on the issue of regulating laboratory developed tests. The office's current associate director, Don St. Pierre, will become acting director until a replacement is appointed. Dr. Guterres and I have worked together in recent years to strengthen FDA and NHGRI's interactions and collaborations, and I genuinely wish him well in his future endeavors. On August 11th, all NIH grantees, contractors, researchers, and research administrators were notified about upcoming changes to NIH clinical trial policies. The upcoming policy changes aim to improve the stewardship of NIH funded clinical trials by clarifying and broadening the definition of a clinical trial. Specifically, there are a number of new expectations for clinical trials that will come into effect for applications due on or after January 25th, 2018. These changes are part of an ongoing effort to improve transparency and oversight of NIH funded clinical trials. In 2014, NIH first clarified and broadened the definition of a clinical trial as part of this process. Now, NIH has developed a new clinical trial requirements webpage to provide all the information that investigators need to ensure that they are complying with the new policies. The webpage includes case studies, FAQs, and an interactive tool for determining whether a study meets the definition of a clinical trial. Last week, in an unexpected turn of events, President Trump cut a deal with the Democratic leadership to address several issues in one fell swoop. Following that, the House and Senate passed a bill that provides disaster relief funds for those impacted by Hurricane Harvey. In that same bill, the debt ceiling was lifted for three months and the federal government was also funded by a continuing resolution or CR through December 8th. So we will not face a government shutdown on October 1. December, we'll see. While the government remains open during this interim period, the House and Senate will be working on negotiating and finalizing all of the appropriations that will comprise the fiscal year 2018 budget. So these three months give us a brief reprieve, but we still have to wait and see if we face a threat of a government shutdown in December, if Congress will approve another short term continuing resolution or if an actual fiscal year 2018 budget gets passed by December 8th. So stay tuned. But speaking of appropriations, last week was also busy here in DC because on Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the labor HHS bill that outlines funding for the National Institutes of Health, among many other things. Importantly, the bill includes a proposed $2 billion increase for NIH. That would raise NIH's total budget to $36.1 billion. Several initiatives were specifically appropriated funds from this $2 billion increase that includes $414 million for Alzheimer's disease research, $140 million for the brain initiative, $50 million for combating antibiotic resistance, and $60 million for the All of Us research program. Now in the Senate's bill, NHGRI's fiscal year 2018 budget would be $547 million, reflecting a 3.5% increase over fiscal year 2017. Now earlier this summer, the House Committee or the corresponding House Committee approved a bill that would also give a nice increase to the NIH budget, although the House mark was not quite as high as the Senate's. Now both the Senate and the House bills include prohibition on capping the funds provided for facilities and administration, also known as indirect costs. Now this is one of 12 appropriation bills that will be part of the final fiscal year 2018 budget package that the full House and Senate will eventually need to pass and send to the President for signature. So the bottom line is that if we actually eventually get a fiscal year 2018 budget, then it will hopefully or likely come with an increase of budget for NIH and for NHGRI. So keep your fingers crossed. So with that I'll move on to some general genomics updates. Starting with the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative or G2MC, a product of this Council's Genomic Medicine Working Group. This organization held its third meeting in April. Now G2MC arose from the sixth genomic medicine meeting in 2014 with a focus on genomic medicine implementation efforts internationally. It began as an action collaborative with the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine, and has since evolved into an independent nonprofit organization that is co-located and sharing staff with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health or GA4GH. Now G2MC can be considered the implementation partner of the data and research efforts of the GA4GH and has been focusing on extending novel implementation models to other countries and medical systems. This year's meeting in Athens welcomed over 120 delegates from nearly 50 countries, including first-time participants from South America and Africa. From the meeting, collaborative projects in genomic variant interpretation, online case conferences and policy are under development. The G2MC was recently commissioned by the heads of international research organizations or the HEROES group to convene a major large-scale cohort, to convene those involved in major large-scale cohort studies around the world to have a meeting to help promote data standardization, interoperability, and sharing among those cohorts. Eligible cohorts will be those with 100,000 or more participants with biological samples and prospective follow-up information capable of collecting samples and follow-up. More than 10 minutes. Maybe that's the secret. Yeah, let's go to four hours. There we go. Excellent. The first meeting for this international group of cohorts is planned for early 2018. Mona Miller, who Rudy introduced, was appointed the new executive director for the American Society of Human Genetics or ASHG in late July. Ms. Miller holds a master's degree in public policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She comes to ASHG from the Society for Neuroscience, where she served as the deputy executive director for programs and finance and as a senior director of communications. Prior to that, she served as a senior officer of public affairs at the Pew Charitable Trust and as communications director for former Senator Barbara Mikulski. Mona replaces Joe McInerney, who will remain as a consultant to Ms. Miller until his retirement at the end of 2017. And we look forward to working with Ms. Miller and continuing the strong synergistic ties between ASHG and NHGRI. Speaking of ASHG, in August, ASHG and 10 other international and domestic organizations issued a statement about human germline genome editing. The statement, which was developed by a working group comprised of scientists, genetic counselors, bioethicists, health service researchers and lawyers, recommends against the use of germline gene editing that was a result in pregnancy, but asserts that in vitro studies of germline gene editing should continue without restriction of public funds. Currently, the Dickie-Wicker amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for research that involves the creation or destruction of embryos, and NIH does not fund any use of gene editing in human embryos. In alignment with an earlier report by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, the statement also sets forth that clinical applications of human germline genome editing should only proceed if there is, quote, a compelling medical rationale and a, quote, quote, an evidence base that supports its clinical use, quote, an ethical justification and, quote, a transparent public process to solicit and incorporate stakeholder input. The five researchers pictured here, Emmanuel Sharpentier from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Control, Jennifer O'Dowda from the University of California, Berkeley, Luciana Marafini from Rockefeller University, Francisco Mohica from the University of Alicante, and Feng Zhang from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received this year's Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for their work on gene editing. They are being honored for their contributions to development of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. Congratulations to all of them. And the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group awards the Allen Distinguished Investigator Grants to Researchers Conducting Pioneering Research on Epigenetics, Aging, and Evolution. This year, current NHRI grantees, Feng Zhang and Jason Buenrastra of the Broad Institute receive these awards for their work in technologies to directly visualize the architecture of the genome and sequence individual regulatory elements within cells. Congratulations to both of them. The MIT Technology Review recently announced its 50 smartest companies among this group were eight related to genomics and genetics. Fourth on the list goes to direct to consumer genetic testing company 23andMe. Also included were Merck at number 17, Ionis Pharmaceuticals at number 20, Illumina at number 22, Sophia Genetics at number 30, Oxford Nanapur at 32, Bluebird Bio at number 37, and Veritas Genetics at number 45. Moving to genomics in the news, there's one item to bring to your attention. The Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, has launched a website to highlight a new series called JAMA Insights, Genomics and Precision Health. This site will feature brief articles intended to explain contemporary clinical genetics and genomic technologies to non-specialists. The article will cover a wide range of topics, including cutting edge precision health technologies as well as those that are in common use. And in terms of genomes in the news, as always, there have been a number of recently generated genome sequences reported since the last council meeting. This includes the tea tree, the goblin orb weaver, the silver birch tree, the beautiful sunflower, equally beautiful, the freshwater snail, the desert tortoise, the Galopagus cormoran, an old oak tree leaves at 234 years, of age, wild wheat, a fourth denose of in, the sand rat, the jaguar, the golden bat, a 3700-year-old Kennaite, I guess it's pronounced, 117 diverse apples, the cotton bull worm, corn ear worm, and the red viscacha rat. So, more genome sequences in the databases. Moving on then to our extramural research program. Starting with the genome sequencing program, the overall aim of this program is to use genome sequencing to identify genes and genomic variants, underlying the full spectrum of human inherited disease. Recall that the genome sequencing program is comprised of a coordinating center, four analysis centers, four centers for common disease genomics, and four centers for Mendelian genomics. The program is also supported by other institutes, including the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Eye Institute. For example, the centers for common disease genomics, autism efforts are co-funded by the Simons Foundation. The centers for common disease genomics Alzheimer's disease efforts are co-funded by the National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project. Additionally, the genome sequencing program works closely with the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's trans-omics for precision medicine, otherwise known as the TopMed program, particularly for joint data calls and analyses. Specifically looking at the centers for common disease genomics, these centers are using large-scale genome sequencing to discover genomic variants underlying common diseases, to learn about disease architecture and study designs, and to identify rare risk and protective genomic variants. These centers are in their second year of funding and have sequenced over 59,000 samples across three disease categories as shown here. So this table summarizes that sequence production broken down for each disease category and also for whole genome versus whole exome sequences. Out of the 141,600 approved samples, over 33,000 have been sequenced for the study of cardiovascular disease, including early onset cardio, coronary artery disease, early onset atrial fibrillation, and stroke. Over 5,000 samples have been sequenced for immune-mediated diseases, including asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 1 diabetes. Finally, over 20,000 samples have been sequenced for the study of neuropsychiatric diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, autism, and epilepsy. Now, in addition to sequence production goals, the centers are developing collaborative analysis and technology development plans at the present time. Moving then to our other set of centers, the Centers for Mendelian Genomics. This program is halfway through its second funding cycle. The program aims to use genome sequencing analysis to discover the genomic basis of as many Mendelian diseases as possible to accelerate discovery by disseminating methods and results in addition to generating their own data. Now, the four centers have to date generated genome sequences for over 35,000 individuals, mostly by whole exome sequencing. About 42% of the sequencing was performed during the current funding cycle. The centers have found about 1,800 disease genes by conservative criteria, 970 of those represent novel gene phenotype associations. Additionally, about 800 genes have been identified by more suggestive criteria, and most of those potentially represent novel associations. The centers have published over 370 papers with 153 published so far in the current funding cycle. These papers report on disease gene discoveries, method and tool development collaborations with disease groups, choices made by research participants, and future perspectives. Now, in addition to publication, the centers also publicly share appropriately consented genomic data. Now, Matchmaker Exchange is one of the data-sharing venues being used. This is a federated network of databases facilitating case matching based on phenotypic or genotypic profiles. The centers have been among the leaders to develop the network since its launch in late 2013, and currently contributes to three of these nodes that are highlighted on this slide. Moving beyond the genome sequencing program to our technology development program, this program continues to move forward, paving the way to develop new and improved technologies to enable genomic discoveries and facilitate adoption of genomics in medicine. An advanced genomic technology development meeting was held at Northeastern University in May. Novel nucleic acid sequencing and genomic technology grantees from the program met over several days to facilitate communication, collaboration, and interaction. An adjacent public meeting allowed broader community participation. Grantee and community feedback was very favorable and we're working on the next meeting of this group planned for May of 2018. One upcoming funding opportunity deserves mentioning, a program announcements for novel genomic technology development are resulting in a wide breadth of submitted applications and funded grants ranging from advanced tools and critical reagents to the development of epigenomic and genomic profiling assays. The next application due date for this is late October of this year. The goal of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements or ENCODE 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 community. At this year's American Society for Human Genetics meeting, a workshop will be held dedicated to teaching users how to navigate the ENCODE Encyclopedia using the newly created online visualization tool, SCREEN, or Search Candidate Regulatory Elements by ENCODE. SCREEN was developed by the ENCODE's Data Analysis Center to allow for seamless navigation through ENCODE's extensive encyclopedia and the workshop will provide training navigating the annotated genomes available through this resource. As always, ENCODE data are being widely used. There's now more than 2,000 community publications that's reflected by the pink line from groups without ENCODE funding who are used or have used ENCODE data for their published work. ENCODE consortia members have produced more than 600 publications, that's the green line, and the use of these data attests to the value of the resources provided by ENCODE and we expect these numbers to increase as more data becomes available generated by ENCODE investigators. The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science or SEGs program supports the interdisciplinary research teams to develop highly innovative approaches to address genomic problems and a new award was recently made for establishing a Center for Genome Editing and Recording. Jennifer Douda at the University of California, Berkeley as the principal investigator with collaborators at University of California, San Francisco, the Broad Institute in Massachusetts General Hospital. Building on the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology, this center aims to create methods to detect, alter, and record the sequence and output of the genome in individual cells and tissues. Moving to the Electronic Medical Resource and Genomics or Emerge Network, this group conducts genomic discovery and clinical implementation research by leveraging data from large biorepositories linked to electronic medical records. On October 30th, NHGRI will be hosting a program review workshop entitled Emerge and Beyond the Future of EHR and Genomics as Emerge Phase 3 will end in June of 2019. This workshop will bring together Emerge principal investigators, the Emerge External Scientific Panel, NHGRI council members, experts from external experts in key areas of genomic medicine and patient representatives to review the current goals and accomplishments of Emerge as well as to design future directions for possible continuation of the Emerge Network. The workshop goals include identifying gaps, discussing challenges and defining future opportunities in genomic medicine research and implementation. The workshop will focus on the following four main topics, evidence generation for genomic medicine, identification of novel and disruptive opportunities in genomic medicine, electronic phenotyping for genomic research and electronic medical records or EMR integration of genomic results and automated decision support. The meeting will be webcast live and archived in NHGRI's Genome TV channel of YouTube. Meanwhile, the clinical genome resource or ClinGen considers the sharing of genomic variant interpretations as essential for quality assurance and for accurate genetic and genomic testing. As such, they developed a list of clinical laboratories who meet a minimum standard of data sharing and encourage other laboratories to apply for this status through the ClinGen website. ClinGen continues to educate the research in clinical communities about their resources and tools. And during the June 2017 curating the clinical genome meeting, which was co-organized with Decipher, the ClinGen team led a training session on their current tools that was attended by more than 200 researchers and clinicians. And next year's meeting of this sort will be held May 23rd to 25th in Hingston, England. 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. Having formally ended over the summer, CSER enrolled over 5,400 adults and over 1,400 children with germline genome sequence data generated for over 5,400 of these individuals and tumor sequence data for over 1,400 of these individuals. As one measure of overall impact, CSER generated 345 total publications to date, including 21 cross-CSER working group publications. A recent highlight from CSER comes from the MedStar project in an effort to study the impact of whole genome sequencing on the outcomes of healthy adult patients. Investigators conducted a study of 100 healthy participants randomized to receive a family history report alone or in combination with an interpreted whole genome sequence report. The study demonstrated the feasibility of returning genomic results by primary care providers rather than genetic counselors or other genetics specialists. The results showed that primary care physicians discovered genomic variants indicative of monogenic disease risk and about 22% of patients and recommended new clinical actions for 34% of the patients whose genome had been sequenced compared to 16% of the patients that received only the family history report. The study was accompanied by a commentary written by NHGRI's Terry Minolio and the paper's primary author, Jason Vassie, who was featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Transitioning to phase two of CSER or the Clinical Sequencing Evidence Generating Research Program, new awards were announced in June. Phase two of the CSER Consortium will involve six clinical sites and one coordinating center. Phase two of CSER aims to generate evidence related to the clinical utility of genome sequencing with a major emphasis on recruiting ancestrally diverse and underserved populations. Much of the work produced in phase two of CSER will be built upon CSER's progress to date and we're excited to welcome these seven sites to the new phase of the program. Moving over to the Implementing Genomics in Practice or IGNITE network, this group works to enhance the use of genomic medicine by supporting the development of methods for incorporating genomic medicine into clinical care. To date, IGNITE research has led to the publication of more than 100 papers, a small subset of which are shown here. Looking towards the future, the requests for applications or RFAs for the next phase of IGNITE reflecting the concept approved by this council in May have now been released. Applications for all three RFAs are due on November 3rd of this year. In February, the Computational Genomics and Data Science program of NHGRI brought a concept to this council to establish an NHGRI Genomic Data Commons. This concept has now been developed into a request for applications for the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Analysis, Visualization Informatics Lab Space, or ANVIL. NHGRI plans to establish the ANVIL as a resource to democratize genomic data access, sharing, and computing. The resource will leverage scalable cloud-based infrastructure to co-locate data storage and computing capacity with commonly used tools for analyzing and sharing genomic data. It is also expected to provide access to unrestricted and controlled access data and metadata from NHGRI-funded programs. The request for applications was released this past July and the applications are due on November 9th, 2017. Moving on to the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications or LC Research Program. Of course, this program supports research on the implications of genomics for individuals, for families, and for communities. And the Genomics and Society Working Group of this council provides guidance to the Institute about the LC Research Program. And at their recent in-person meeting, this working group heard updates from a number of NHGRI divisions before brainstorming ideas for the future directions for LC Research. This summer, the LC Research Program reissued its three core program announcements, covering investigator-initiated research. These program announcements invite applications for LC Research in three cross-cutting domain areas, genomic research, genomic healthcare, and broader legal policy and societal issues. Nine other NIH institutes and centers, those that are listed here on the slide, have agreed to participate in at least one of these announcements and have provided information on their specific interests. Meanwhile, the program also released a request for applications or RFA for Centers of Excellence in LC Research or CERS. This RFA is seeking applications to support the establishment of sustainable transdisciplinary research centers. Information about existing centers in the CERS program is available on the NHGRI website. Letters of intent are due September 30th and applications are then due October 31st. The LC Research Program recently cosponsored the fourth LC Congress, which was held in June at the Jackson Laboratory in Farmington, Connecticut. This was the first such meeting to be held since the 2011 LC Congress at the University of North Carolina. Over 300 attended the conference, which drew people from across the US and a number of other countries. Keynote speakers included Stephanie Devaney from the NIH All of Us Research Program, Alondra Nelson for Columbia University, former council members Wiley Burke, Jim Evans, and Pearl Orr Work. Their talks covered a variety of LC topics, including issues of precision medicine, ancestry and identity, and the use of genome sequencing for clinical care. Videos of the plenary presentations and abstracts from the concurrent sessions are available on the LC Congress website that you can find on document 32. NHGRI has a long-term commitment to preparing the next generation of genomic scientists and scholars and continues to enhance our investment in research training and career development programs. So in April, the NHGRI Research Training and Career Development Program held its second annual meeting in St. Louis. The meeting once again provided a venue for all trainees supported by NHGRI programs to present their research and to form collaborations with other trainees and established investigators. Pictured on the left are the meeting attendees. Of the 244 attendees, 179 were trainees. These trainees are associated with a diversity action plan or DAP programs, the T32 training programs, the Centers of Excellence in LC Research Program, and the NHGRI Intramural Research Program in addition to individual fellowship and career development awards. Pictured on the right are the poster award winners, which included trainees from undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, graduate and post-graduate career levels. The next annual meeting will be held March 18th to 20th, 2018 in Los Angeles. Now, NHGRI's training programs continue to grow and evolve. Three new institutional training programs in genomic medicine and LC research were awarded this summer. We refer to these as T32s based on the grant mechanism used. These new programs will complement the 15 currently funded NHGRI T32 programs. So Jeff Ginsburg at Duke University and Katherine Nathanson at the University of Pennsylvania will lead two new T32 programs in genomic medicine. These programs will train both MDs and PhDs and will incorporate a mix of coursework, clinical laboratory rotations and mentoring that will teach practical skills for disease gene discovery, patient gene sequence, interpretation and big data management and research in clinical settings. Steven Jofi at the University of Pennsylvania will lead a new T32 program in LC research. This postdoctoral program will combine mentored original research and targeted coursework that will lead to a Master of Science in Medical Ethics or MSME degree. You will note that we have funded two new T32 programs at the University of Pennsylvania. The training goals of these two programs are distinct but they will capitalize on synergies to strengthen cross-disciplinary mentoring, improve recruitment and oversight and foster interaction and collaboration among the two trainee groups. So moving beyond NHGRI programs, let me say some things about some NIH Common Fund and other trans-NIH programs. Starting with the NIH Common Fund's Knockout mouse phenotyping project or COM2. This project will create and phenotype 3,000 strains of knockout mice using CRISPR technology between 2016 and 2020. The program is on track to meet its fall 2017 goals. The program is part of the larger in international mouse phenotyping consortium or IMPC. This year, the annual IMPC meeting with a panel of scientific consultants will be held in Athens, Greece in mid-November. Meanwhile, a COMP paper describing the prevalence of sexual dimorphism and mammalian phenotypic traits was published earlier this year in nature communications and another COMP paper describing 360 new disease models and providing the first functional annotation of 1,092 genes was published earlier this year in nature genetics. Finally, a manuscript demonstrating the large and unexplored genetic landscape involved in deafness including the identification of 52 null alleles in genes not previously associated with hearing loss is in press at nature. The Human Heredity and Health in Africa or H3Africa Project's central goal is to develop a sustainable and collaborative African genetics and genomics research enterprise. This past May, H3Africa held its last consortium meeting for stage one in Gabarone, Botswana. This meeting featured the progress from the first five years of the program and charted a course for its future. I was actually fortunate to be a guest speaker at this meeting and found that the gathering nicely showcased the remarkable accomplishments of the H3Africa consortium to date. Looking forward, we anticipate issuing awards for stage two of H3Africa before the end of this month and then welcoming new and returning grantees to the first consortium meeting for stage two in March of 2018. Additionally, this coming November, the African Society for Human Genetics will be hosting its 10th annual meeting in Cairo in partnership with H3Africa and with the Egyptian National Society of Human Genetics. A number of current and former H3Africa grantees will be presenting and it will be an opportunity to expand the human genetics outreach of H3Africa on the African continent. And lastly, we're proud to announce that the H3Africa consortium just recently surpassed its 100th publication mark. So congratulations to them. The NIH Common Funds Undiagnosed Diseases Network, or UDN, aims to improve the level of diagnosis and care for patients with undiagnosed diseases to 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. To date, the UDN has received over 1600 applications, about 71 per month, accepted 639 participants for evaluation at the seven UDN clinical sites across the nation, about 28 per month, and made 93 diagnoses. Also shown here are the accepted and diagnosed percentages for the program to date. To apply to the UDN, access the UDN gateway by clicking on the Apply button, which appears on all of the UDN webpages. Now, recently, five new funding opportunity announcements or FOAs for phase two of the UDN were announced. This includes FOAs for an anticipated eight to 10 clinical sites, one coordinating center, and three to six UDN core laboratories, including one to two model organism screening centers, sequencing cores, and metabolomics cores. In phase two of the program, the UDN will continue accepting participants with unsolved medical conditions, as well as study the components required for network sustainability, once Common Fund support ends. And all applications are due on November 2nd of this year. The Gabriela Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program, otherwise known as Kids First, is a 10-year NIH Common Fund program initiated in 2015 with a $12.6 million annual budget. Kids First aims to develop a data resource for the pediatric research community with well-curated phenotypic and genotypic variant data that will facilitate identification of genetic pathways, underlying childhood cancer and structural birth defects. Now, today, 23 cohorts associated with over 1,800 DNA samples from patients with pediatric cancer and structural birth defects have been obtained using the X01 mechanism. Genome sequencing of these samples was jump-started in 2015 at the NHGRI-funded sequencing centers at the Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University with a $12.6 million supplement. In September of 2016, the designated Kids First sequencing centers were then funded, one at the Broad Institute and the other as a collaboration between Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. These designated centers will receive $31 million from 2016 to 2019. To date, genome sequencing has performed with about 9,000 of the available samples. Now, in June of this year, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was selected as the Data Resource Center and will be provided $15 million of funds from 2017 to 2022. It will serve as the Data Resource Portal, Data Coordinating Center and Administrative Coordinating Center. Finally, several NIH institutes started soliciting small research grants last year to support the analyses of Kids First data that will be submitted to the Data Resource Center. The initial set of such awards were made earlier this year. Now, the recently conceived NIH Data Commons is a comprehensive vision for an interoperable multi-cloud platform for storing, sharing, accessing and computing biomedical data. All aspects of the Data Commons aim to facilitate making biomedical research data fair. That is, findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Awards will be made under other transactions or OT research opportunity announcements to support the establishment of the NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase Consortium. Now, the NIH Data Commons will initially be populated with data sets from the Common Fund Genotype Tissue Expression or GTEX project, the NHLBI-funded Transomics for Precision Medicine, or TopMed program, and the newly formed NHGRI-funded Alliance for Genomic Resources, or AGR, also known as the Model Organism Databases or MADS Consortium. The entire NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase is expected to last for four years and encompass two stages. Stage one will last six months during which consortium investigators will develop working prototypes as proof of concept for the architecture of the Data Commons and also develop an implementation plan. This stage will kick off with the meeting of the initial consortium in Bethesda sometime this fall. And then stage two will involve having the funded investigators fully implement the successful pilot activities. So stay tuned as NIH stands up this Data Commons during its pilot phase. Moving on then, the NIH All of Us Research Program aims to gather data from one million or more people living in the United States to accelerate research and improve health. By taking into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and biology, researchers will uncover paths towards delivering precision medicine. Now key All of Us activities in the past few months have included starting enrollment of participants as beta testers of the program. Finalizing and posting the initial institutional review board approved research protocol and funding for community partners, 50 forward the National Alliance of Hispanic Health, Delta Research and Education Foundation and the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. These awardees will raise awareness about all of us among seniors, Hispanics and Latinos, African Americans, and the LGBTQ community. All of us has also established a trans-NIH Liaisons Coordinating Team to provide input on scientific opportunities and to share information with all of the NIH Institutes and Centers. And I would note that Carolyn Hutter is NHGRI's representative to this group and also serves as the group's co-chair. And All of Us also initiated the children, the child enrollment scientific vision working group as a part of its advisory panel, which is detailing the kinds of research projects that would be enabled by having children of diverse backgrounds included in the All of Us research program. Finally, and of particular interest, I expect to this council, All of Us has established a genomics working group of its advisory panel. This working group is co-chaired by Debbie Nickerson and former council member, Lon Cardin, and is charged with the important task of guiding the development of an All of Us comprehensive genomic strategy. I am a member of this working group as are council members Jay Shenduri and Wendy Chung. The liberations by this working group only began this past summer, but I anticipate being able to report to council in February more details about the initial genomics plan for the All of Us research program. Moving on to our division of policy communications and education, and first with a welcome, NHGRI's division of policy communications and education partners with the American Society of Human Genetics, ASHG, to sponsor the Genetics and Public Policy Fellowship each year. The program provides the selected fellow with an opportunity to work in the executive branch with NHGRI's policy and program analysis branch, also to work at ASHG, and then in Congress, thereby providing robust exposure to policy development from each vantage point. This year's fellow is Nikki Meadows, introduced by Rudy earlier in the open session. Dr. Meadows earned her PhD in human genetics from McGill University, and while at McGill, she studied how genetic and nutritional perturbations and folate metabolism altered the outcome of malarial infection. Nikki just arrived at NHGRI, and we look forward to working with her during her fellowship. Now, the NHGRI policy and program analysis branch published two new web resources for stakeholders on our website, genome.gov, earlier this summer. The points to consider regarding the FDA's Investigational Device Exemption Regulation site is an updated version of a resource that NHGRI provided in the past to help investigators understand the requirements of the Investigational Device Exemption or IDE regulation. As this council has previously discussed, the IDE regulation applies to some clinical genomics research involving the use of genomic tests that are not FDA approved or FDA cleared. The new resource is based on a workshop that we held last year, and is intended to provide greater clarity for genomics researchers who are facing this regulation for the first time. And additionally, to meet the spike in interest in genome editing technologies, we created a new web resource for the general public that describes the technical aspects of various technologies as well as the ethical and social issues surrounding their use. The goal of this resource is to introduce this topic to students and lifelong learners in a fashion that gives appropriate attention to the state of the science and the basic research applications of genome editing rather than just focusing on the technology's clinical potential. In June, NHGRI's Communications and Public Liaison Branch launched a publicly available image gallery on the website Flickr. This NHGRI image gallery provides free access to a curated selection of high quality scientific illustrations, infographics and photographs. Such a convenient site now enables the public to freely use NHGRI's genomics graphics and imagery in work presentations, school projects, news reports, and so forth. The gallery currently contains 123 elements that have been viewed over 147,000 times since its launch and we have plans to regularly add elements and to grow the available collection. NHGRI's History of Genomics programs recently held a database users meeting in which a number of the top scholars from both the United States and abroad provided feedback on the current state of our growing genomics history resource. The meeting also provided the opportunity for participants to discuss how various upcoming coordinated publications could leverage the NHGRI archive. In addition, the program continues to bring history scholars to NHGRI to make presentations as part of the History of Molecular Biology and Genomics lecture series. Since the last council meeting, two such history scholars have visited, one giving a talk about the reconceptualization of 20th century biology as the century of the genome rather than just the gene and another giving a talk about the history of genetic linkage analysis. The NHGRI Smithsonian Genome Unlocking Life's Code exhibition concludes its stay in Houston actually today and will make its international debut in Canada at the end of September. In fact, I'll be traveling to Ontario in early October to participate in a public symposium associated with the exhibition's opening. In early 2018, the exhibition will return to the United States with a stop in New York at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Please continue to check the exhibition's website and follow it on social media for the most up-to-date program information. For the second year in a row, NHGRI's Education and Community Involvement Branch hosted a two-week summer program for 10 high school students in collaboration with Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation's Youth Career Connect program. Prince George's County is implementing programming designed to support college readiness and workplace skill development for secondary school students. The summer program includes or included lectures from NHGRI experts on a variety of current topics and genomics and featured hands-on activities. Following two weeks at NIH, the students spent two additional week at Prince George's Community College to continue their studies. Based on the topics they learned about students prepared group presentations on topics of their choosing, including cystic fibrosis, hella cells, asthma, and progeria. Speaking of hella cells, in June, NHGRI and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture held an educator workshop on Henrietta Lacks and the hella cell line for middle school and high school history, social studies and science teachers. The event took place at the museum and educators had the opportunity to hear lectures about the era of segregation during the life of Henrietta Lacks, the history of race and American medicine, hella cells and DNA and the secrets within, and current U.S. health disparities. Participants also had the opportunity to converse with Jerry Lacks, the granddaughter of Henrietta Lacks, and Shirley Lacks, the daughter-in-law of Henrietta Lacks. The workshop served as a kickoff event for the development of resources for history and science teachers on Henrietta Lacks and hella cells. Four high school teachers, four high school teachers, two history and two science teachers are working with NHGRI and the museum to develop a set of lesson plans which are slated for debut in April 2018, just in time for DNA Day 2018. In late July, spilling over into early August, NHGRI's Education and Community Involvement Branch held its annual short course in genomics for middle school, high school, community college, and tribal college educators. This year, 25 teachers came from NIH from across the United States to listen to lectures and to receive teaching resources. NHGRI and NIH researchers, clinician, and staff taught at this course providing approaches and resources to incorporate genomic content into teachers' classrooms. The course also included tours of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Centers and the National Library of Medicine. Over the course of four days, the teachers further their professional development in the areas of complex genetic diseases, CRISPR-Cas9, bioinformatics, the human microbiome, LC research, and other topics. This annual course provides the unique opportunity for NHGRI investigators to work with teachers to bring the latest genomic advances and techniques into secondary community college and tribal college classrooms. Then complimenting this, in August, NHGRI's Genomic Healthcare Branch held its 2017 short course in genomics for nurse physician assistants and faculty to enhance their knowledge of genomics and to provide ways to integrate genomics into clinical practice and curriculum. This year, 50 participants, from as close as Bethesda to as far away as South Africa, attended the course. Featured speakers included NIH experts, discussing genetic counseling, ethical and legal issues of genomic medicine, equity and treatment and health disparities, pharmacogenomics and nationally, and integration of genomics into the NIH clinical center. Now in addition, some recognized champions in genomics education also provided lectures and one-on-one consultations, discussing breast practices for incorporating genomics into coursework as well as clinical practice. And an alumni healthcare genomics education listserv for the participants has been established to help create a network of interdisciplinary healthcare professionals who could help us continue to share best practices and resources in this area. And then meanwhile, the Inner Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education and Genomics, or ISCC, aims to improve practitioner genomic literacy and to enhance the practice of genomic medicine through the sharing of educational approaches and identification of educational needs. The ISCC is overseen by an external co-chair and an NHGRI co-chair. Now there have been some changes in this area. Richard Haspel is the new external co-chair. Rich is the director of medical education in the Department of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. With the departure of Bob Wilden from NHGRI, Terry Minolio has now taken on the role as the NHGRI co-chair. Coincidentally, Rich and Terry have already been co-chairing ISCC's innovative approaches working group whose charge is to develop novel ways to teach genomics, building on the highly successful training residents in genomics or trig approach developed through the American Society of Clinical Pathologists. So this working group just developed and released a new education resource called the Universal Module Workshop Instructors Handbook and Toolkit. And this toolkit is now available and is intended to serve as a resource with global reach to improve physician genomics education. Then also relevant to that, the NHGRI Genomic Medicine, the Genomic Healthcare Branch recently established a new website that captured the experiences gained through grant program implemented a few years ago. And the method for introducing a new competency genomics project otherwise known as MINK, M-I-N-C, integrates genomics into clinical practice through magnet hospital sites and through this website that's shown here. In addition, administrators and educators offer their experiences to the nursing and broader practitioner community through videos, resources and downloadable documents. The resources and shared experiences are designed to prepare practicing nurses to be competent and caring for patients undergoing genetic and genomic testing and treatments. And this site launched in mid-July and we're eagerly seeking feedback about the site. So finally, a few updates from NHGRI's Intramural Research Program. First, a couple of congratulations or due. Cynthia Tift, who serves as NHGRI's Deputy Clinical Director, recently received the 2017 Rare Impact Award from the National Organization for Rare Disorders, or NORD. Cindy received this honor for her work to solve some of the nation's toughest medical mysteries. As the Director of the Pediatric Component of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Program, she and her team strived to meet the unmet needs of children with disorders that have not yet been diagnosed. So congratulations to Cindy. And then meanwhile, Les Beesecker, a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Medical Genomics and Metabolic Genetics Branch of the NHGRI Intramural Research Program, was recently elected to be the 2019 President of the American Society of Human Genetics. Les will serve as ASHG's President following the terms of Nancy Cox in 2017 and then David Nelson in 2018. So congratulations to Les for this honor. And then as always, I'd like to point out some highlights from, research highlights from NHGRI's Intramural Research Program, who has always been quite productive since the last council meeting. First, Chris Markham and Laura Kaley's group and colleagues discovered that social influence in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy can make a difference in their long-term survival. Their study suggested that cancer patients were more likely to survive for five years or longer after chemotherapy if they interacted with other patients during chemotherapy who also survived for five years or longer. And recall that Francis Collins and IH Director has in our Intramural Program his own research lab. And Francis and Irina Minoli and colleagues recently identified the genomic mutations responsible for Keri Fineman-Zitter syndrome. The researchers found that this syndrome is caused by mutations in the gene MYMK, which encodes the protein myomaker. This discovery will improve physicians' ability to diagnose this disease and offer families accurate genetic counseling and treatment options. And finally, Julie Segre and colleagues published a paper reporting the microbial strain diversity underlying childhood atopic dermatitis. Using metagenomic sequencing approaches, Julie and her colleagues pinpointed the presence of unique strains of staph aureus in patients with severe eczema. These results suggested that not all staff can be considered equal when it comes to the pathogenesis of eczema. And before ending my director's report, as always, I wanna put in a shameless plug for anyone interested in receiving my monthly email updates called the Genomic Landscape. You can simply go to this site and search for NHGRI landscape and sign up if you are so interested in getting extra email once a month. And lastly, a personal thanks to the 50 or 60 or so NHGRI staff members, most of which were sitting in the back who contributed to the slides and information needed to put this director's report together. As always, big group collaborative effort for the month or so running up to a council meeting. And an additional thanks to the NHGRI communications team for making the website, for broadcasting this and doing a lot of behind the scenes work. And a special thanks to Chris Wetterstrand as my ringleader, shown here actually is Chris amongst a group of enthusiastic eclipse watchers at the top of the parking garage next to this building. Indeed, parking garages were a frequent eclipse watching hotspots for NHGRI staff as illustrated by the second photo, atop yet another, I guess the second one is the one next door and the first one was the one on campus. So two major footprints for NHGRI staff are and everybody ran up to the top of parking garages to look at the eclipse take pictures and so forth. And that then concludes my director's report. Are there any immediate questions? If there are no immediate questions, I'm seeing that I'm gonna actually do a special presentation and we've already been joined by NIH's deputy director, but I'm just gonna ask them, we can just make one presentation in front of him because I think he'll enjoy watching this particular. And for this I'm actually gonna go to the podium.