 There she is. Okay, Avani, we're going to hear your presentation for the Diversity Genome Research Center's concept. Good afternoon, everyone. I am presenting the Diversity Genomes Research Center concept on behalf of my colleagues for Jetta Schools, the Training, Diversity and Health Equity Office, and the XMRO Research Program staff who helped develop as well as refine the concept. So, just as a reminder, a couple of years ago, NSRI completed a multi-year process to develop the strategic vision for the next 10 years of human genomics, and a part of that process was developing guiding principles and values for human genomics. We also developed an action agenda for building a diverse genomics research workforce, and thank you to Dr. Benar who touched on the action agenda. Okay, so one of the reasons for the action agenda is that the genomics workforce is not a reflection of the U.S. population, and we now know that diverse investigators bring innovative ideas and increase objectivity and research. And research has shown that minority serving institutions award 25% of all science PhDs, MDs, and health professional degrees to Blacks and Hispanic students each year, but NSRI does not have a strong track record of funding minority serving institutions. So, what we did was we went back and looked at NSRI's grant funding in the last 10 years, and these are grants funded to minority serving institutions in the last 10 years. As you see, we've only funded 63 grants in fiscal years 12 through 16, and that's out of about 100, about 850 grants that were funded during that time. In the next five years, fiscal year 17 to 21, we funded a little bit more, but we increased our grant funding to about 1100 grants during that time. So, if you then look at the institutions that receive less than 25 million research project grants, so removing the institutions that receive over the 25 million, which we looked at, and that was mainly three institutions that qualified as minority serving institutions because they fit the criteria of having a 25% minority student population. They did not have a mission to serve underrepresented populations. When you remove those three institutions, it falls down to single digits. So, if you focus on the minority serving institutions with a historical mission to serve underrepresented populations, we've only funded one in the last 10 years, and that was one HBCU with Historically Black College and University. We have not funded any tribal colleges and universities in NSRI's history. To increase the diversity in the genomics workforce, we are proposing the Diversity Genome Research Centers. These centers would support the development of innovative genomic research projects, the formation of interdisciplinary research teams and infrastructure building. It will also enhance research capacity for diverse genomics workforce and increase access to diverse populations in genomics research. The scope and objectives for the concept are to increase diversity in the genomics research workforce by supporting genomic research infrastructure enhancement, enabling the formation of interdisciplinary research teams, and facilitating cutting edge genomic research at minority serving institutions with a mission to serve historically underrepresented populations. These centers will develop two to three interrelated research projects that address the critical issues in genomics. And the research experiences and capacity building will be built on top of each of those research projects. The centers can propose one or more of the scientific areas that NSRI supports such as genomic technology and methods development, genome structure, genome function, genomics of disease, the use and impact of genomic information in clinical care, healthy research and or computational genomics. So I'm just going to show you a schematic we're proposing two funding opportunities. So potential minority serving institution applicants if they have a developed genomic capacity and infrastructure, they would be able to come in for the full scale genome research center opportunity. These centers would could include cores for administration research capacity and community engagement actually they would include cores this that'll be required, and these cores are structured around those genomic research projects. The minority serving institution will need to be the lead for the cores, as well as the research projects and they can request up to five years total for this funding announcement. The solutions that are a little bit less developed. We are, we are providing a phased approach to becoming full scale. In the first phase, there will be planning and development. It will set their milestones as well as have administrative review to assess the capability of becoming a full scale research center. If the milestones are met, and the review is successful for the center, they then will go on to be full scale. The milestones are not met, or if they don't receive a good score at review, we're hoping that the planning and development will enable the institutions to still be able to be competitive for other RFAs are one opportunities, or funding from other organizations. So in the phased approach, the first phase, they could request up to one to three years. And in this phase they would develop plans for the full scale center and that includes formulating protocols procedures and equipment needs, recruiting staff, identifying providing solutions for any problems that they foresee and testing protocols and procedures. In phase two, they could request up to five years and that depends on the length of their phase one, then in phase two they would implement the plans developed during phase one and they would need to operate at full scale by the second year of phase two. The UG three UH three opportunity the total project period is seven years. So we are allowing collaborations with research intensive institutions and industry, but 70% of the center budget will need to go to that lead MSI. The collaborations will be required within the research center so within the institution, and they will be encouraged between the diversity research, the diversity genome research centers, and other NHGRI consortium collaborations must provide the complete capacity needed to carry out the research projects as well as the didactic and practical experiences, and there will be two meetings a year within the consortium. The successful diversity genome centers would carry out innovative genomic research studies, the foster career development enhancement for trainings and investigators to enhance institutional genomic research capacity as well as genomic research infrastructure, computational strategic capability within their institutions, though enable investigators to be successful in competitive extramural support for genomic research outside of the center funding, as well as establish sustainable partnerships with stakeholders to increase collaboration and disseminate the resources and findings from the centers. So I touched on the strategic vision and action agenda at the beginning of the presentation, and I just want to point out that this proposed program aligns with the guiding principles and values as it will maximize the usability of genomics for all members of the public. It champions the diverse genomics workforce, as well as embracing the interdisciplinary and team oriented nature of research. It also aligns with goals in the action agenda, it'll develop and support training programs and networks that connect undergraduate and graduate education to careers and genomics, as well as supporting training and career development for transition programs that lead to independent research and careers in genomics. The budget for the concept is pretty modest is 42 and a half million over seven years, we have built in scenarios for phase for not all of the phase one or ease to achieve phase two, and phase one would be, we're estimating about 300,000 total costs per year to support the planning and for the full scale center and then they would full scale would be 2 million per year total costs with 500 direct costs in the first year of their full scale for any equipment and infrastructure needs. I'm happy to answer any questions that you all have our discussions are Kyle brothers and gail Jarvik. Kyle, do you want to start out. Sure. So, I'll just start by saying I'm a big supporter of this concept I think. You know, I don't think you said it have any but it's in the concept itself that one in four science doctoral degree and health professions doctoral degree. So, I think that many of you black and Hispanic students are put out by these organizations so you know really highlights that when, if you're trying to build a diverse genomics workforce, these organizations are going to be key partners in doing that. So I think setting up a, an opportunity for these organizations is really super idea. So, maybe just goes without saying that many of these organizations have very strong relationships with underserved communities, they're located physically in underserved communities many times. And so again, just another great opportunity to achieve, you know, one dimension of NHG rice strategic games. I do have one suggestion is sort of a supportive suggestion. I'm going to be a UG three FOA for the developmental centers and phase one currently have $300,000 proposed budget. But I really would encourage you to consider increasing that. I just think about, you know, the aim of building infrastructure these organizations, a lot of that work. Organizations with really large endowments or sort of, you know, a lot of extra funds floating around, you know, there's a lot of in kind and call share kinds of contributions to that infrastructure building. And, and I think some of these organizations might not have that kind of opportunity in the way that some other larger or well funded organizations will have so I really think it will be important to help the internal stakeholders at those organizations to be able to make the case that they're bringing in funds that are worth the organization also investing in so it strikes me that 300,000 might be too, too little to really create that momentum at the awarded organizations so anyway, that's really the only suggestion I have otherwise, I think this is a great idea. Thank you so much, Kyle. Yeah, so I like Kyle I'm extremely enthusiastic about this proposal it's a very, very challenging problem and this is a really creative approach to try and increase the diversity of the workforce. It makes sense to have these institutions be the leaders in these I think it makes sense for them to be able to partner but not, you know, not just in name but actually, you know run the work and, and so I think it's a very, very thoughtful approach. I particularly like the ability to have a planning grant. I don't necessarily think that more than 300,000 honestly is needed for the planning phase because the next phase is higher but I don't have a strong opinion either way about that but I think that the ability to have a planning phase is essential for this kind of a program for people who are going to enter a new territory for them that we want them to enter and then the other thing. I mean this is really like what do I like best about something that I love but the other thing that I'm really happy to see is the emphasis on community engagement. And I think this is something we are all trying to learn to do, and that this program could really have leadership in that area so I'm very enthusiastic about that so, as I said, you know, what do I like most. Thank you, Gal. Any other comments or suggestions. Lisa Parker's hand is up Lisa. Okay. Thanks, Stephanie. I had a question about sort of sheer numbers of potential applicants. So, do we have a sense of how many institutions would qualify as or be described as having more developed genomics research capacity at this point in time. I did do some engagement of minority serving institutions to understand the needs and the, and the equipment and what, what kind of genomics research was going on and there is a number of institutions I would say, out of the institutions that we engage in, so we're in the teams that could possibly come in I would say, maybe eight to 12 institutions could come in, who, if we have the cut off as not receiving more than 25 million if we. That's more than that if we don't have a cut off. But there is a significant amount of institutions that would be able to come in that do have the infrastructure if they would like to come in for this funding opportunity. Thank you. And I am now seeing I'm only seeing three people at a time so I don't know if how or if the car or first or if I'm missing someone else. It's how first and if the car. Okay. So, I too could not be more enthusiastic about this program. I'm hoping that efforts will be made to ensure that the collaboration between less experienced and more research intensive institutions is more than casual that will likely involve an extensive travel budget, and also funds to support term visitations between the institutions. So, I think that that should be included as part of the budget. There are also, it seems should be an effort to encourage networking between funded centers, you know they'll each have their own strengths and weaknesses. And my, I can imagine that they would complement each other. So I hope that there will be many opportunities for them to to join with each other to share experiences to even share in their sources sources of mentorship. Great. We'll make sure to ensure to write that into the funding opportunity. Thank you. How if the car. Sorry, I had a suggestion about areas of research emphasis I don't know whether you will outline those in the RFA, for example, you know things that come to my mind readily are what was already discussed was community engagement but also by a banking and informed consent. I presume that you know when they when there are applications those probably would be included but it'd be great to have additional cohorts of underrepresented groups. My question was, are these institutions. Any of them able to provide access to native peoples or indigenous peoples. We were leaving that open on and we are encouraging travel colleges to come in for this opportunity. But we're leaving it open as to which populations they study we're assuming because as cow pointed out a lot of the institutions fall within communities that are underserved there will be a large underserved populations within their studies. That's an area of desperate need. I know it's a very tough. This program could help kind of get them into the fold for population genomics research. We do plan to. If this concept goes forward into funding opportunities and it's published we do plan to do a lot of outreach to these institutions to make sure they're aware of the funding opportunity. Thank you. Other questions or comments for evening. Okay, can I have a motion to approve the concept. All in favor. Anyone opposed or anyone abstain. Okay. Thank you, Ebony. Thank you.