 Okay, so Council has seen this before, before NHGRI or any instituted NIH can publish a funding opportunity announcement. We need concept clearance or approval from the Council. So you're going to hear five presentations today. One at a time, there'll be a discussion, question and answer session with Council and then I will ask for a vote to approve the concept. So Tina Gatlin, Program Director in Genome Sciences is going to lead off with the great program concept. Tina, go ahead. Okay. Thanks, Rudy. So I'm pleased to have this opportunity to address Council today to present this concept, the genome research experiences to attract talented undergraduates into the genomics field to promote diversity. And so this great program concept is for consideration as another path forward in our efforts to enhance the diversity of the genomics workforce. And as a follow on to Vence's presentation, I would like to say that it was a privilege to contribute to the important work of the Diversity Working Group and I'd like to thank Vence for his fine leadership which led to the release of our Action Agenda. So this concept was originally formulated last summer and was further refined by a group of my colleagues. And so I would like to start by acknowledging Lisa, Brianna, Lourgetta and Jen for their help in shaping this concept. So regarding concepts to champion a diverse genomics workforce, so as Eric mentioned in his director's report, we have already moved forward with two initiatives that were approved at last Council, so an F99K00, pre-doctor, post-doct transition award as well as a K18, which is a short-term career enhancement award for faculty members. And so we follow on by bringing to this Council two more concepts, this great program and then also the grants for new investigators to promote diversity. And then for next May, Council and beyond, we do anticipate bringing forward future concepts stemming from the Action Agenda. For the outline of my presentation, so I'll first take the goal of the concept, provide some background and our rationale for moving this idea forward, present the general scope and objectives, and then go over how this concept relates to ongoing activities, and then open the floor to Council discussion. And as Rudy mentioned, then he would then ask Council for a vote on the concept. So for this proposed great program, the overarching goal is to encourage undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds who are enrolled at diversity-serving institutions to pursue further training and careers in genomics research that are within NHGRI mission areas. This will be achieved by providing students research educational activities and within the structure of institutional partnerships. And as background as Ben's described already, so NHGRI recently published an Action Agenda detailing the Institute's vision for building and championing a diverse workforce. This proposed program addresses elements of all four goal areas of the Action Agenda in terms of developing programs, facilitating inclusion and retention, developing evaluation metrics, but especially addresses, as Ben's mentioned, the second goal, which is to develop and support training programs and networks that connect undergraduate and graduate education to careers in genomics. And then in particular, via sub-goal 2.2 in the document to ensure that undergraduate diversity-serving institutions are aware of and tightly connected to that network. So diversity-serving institutions are defined here as institutions of higher education that have a historical mission or dedicated commitment to educating individuals from diverse backgrounds. So institutes such as HBCUs and Hispanic-serving schools. And so I'll say a little more about our focus on diversity-serving institutes on a later slide. So the data shows that under-representation in the health-related sciences includes individuals from certain racial and ethnic groups, as well as individuals with disabilities or from disadvantaged backgrounds, and then women at the faculty level. And as such, NIH leadership encourages institutes within NIH to continue efforts to diversify their respective research workforces. And the largest category of under-representation are certain racial and ethnic groups. And so this is a category that can be used as a good proxy for under-representation. And so the data shows that racial and ethnic minorities constitute about 34 percent of the U.S. population, yet they comprise only 10 percent of students who are enrolled in genetics or genomics graduate programs in the U.S., according to NSF data. And then in our own internal analysis, a large fraction of the grad students that NHGRI supports via the T32 institutional training grant, and in the past decade, only 14 percent of T32-supported graduate students were from under-represented racial and ethnic groups. So this is slightly better than the 10 percent from NSF data, but it's still drastically lower than the national population. So these statistics highlight the need to strengthen the pathway from undergraduate to graduate school for under-represented groups. So for scope and objectives, again, the overall focus is to help diversify the genomic workforce, and research educational support will be provided to undergraduates who are enrolled at institutions that have a historical mission to educate under-represented students. The program will provide resources for institutions to establish partnerships in order to implement collaborative approaches to genome research education. The partnership must include a lead or applicant institution that is a diversity-serving institution, and then one or more partnership institutions, which must be a research-intensive institution with a suitable research base in genomics for graduate-level training, as evidenced by a significant number of potential mentors with R01 or equivalent extramural research support. So I would like to say more about why NHGRI is interested in this kind of partnership model. So first of all, this is a space that NHGRI and most high Cs have not ventured into before, and one of the recommendations stemming from an ACD report on diversity in the biomedical research workforce was to support creative partnerships between research-intensive institutions and diversity-serving institutions, which are also often under-resourced. So partnerships are an effort to help level the playing field between low and high resource institutions, leveling the playing field, being language we often hear from diversity-focused offices at NIH, particularly the NIH Office of Scientific Workforce Diversity. And there is evidence that shows that for students, talent is not evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. This is due to structural racism and so on, which results in underrepresented students often being underprivileged, and that they have unequal access to education, resources, and experiences compared to their well-represented counterparts. This is why we want the diversity-serving institution to serve as the lead, to provide them more direct access to resources, and this will also give them greater authority to shape and direct the educational partnership. This reasoning is in line with language from the diversity action agenda in which attention in the form of guidance and resources must go to where the students are concentrated, as this may better lead them to and through graduate genomics training programs. So applicants will be expected to develop a two-year genomic research education program, where students will be supported part-time during the academic year and full-time in the summer to conduct genomics research with participating faculty. The research experiences should take place at the research-intensive institution. However, the research at the diversity-serving institution is also encouraged if the research projects and the environmental will align with NHGRI's mission. So research experiences have been shown to increase student performance and retention, in addition to providing valuable preparation for graduate school. However, of equal importance, the program must be complemented by other educational activities, such as courses, boot camps, seminars, lab meetings, career and professional development, and these activities should be conducted at both the applicant and the partnership institutions to maximize impact of the program. Also, students will be eligible for the program if they've already completed two academic years of post-secondary education. Applicants are expected to propose an outstanding mentoring plan, which should include a minimum of students being assigned a mentor at each collaborating institute. And applicants must also propose effective monitoring and evaluation plans, not only to assess the student outcomes, but to assess the effectiveness of the individual mentors as well. And the evaluation should also include an assessment of whether the overall program and its environments are considered to be effective, inclusive, safe, and supportive. So with regard to assessment student outcomes, this is to be determined by the awardees. However, measurable outcomes should include, for example, the number of students matriculating through their research education program, and then those then admitted to graduate programs in STEM or a genomics-related field. Other career outcomes and do they stay engaged in research-related profession, and then also documenting any presentations, publications, and awards. And awardees will be required to track student outcomes once students leave the program. And NHGRI will implement a long-term tracking procedure so as to conduct overall evaluation of the great program. So this program is modeled after other NIH R25 undergraduate diversity programs, including the Blueprint Endure program, the former BD2K program, which ended in 2020, and the NIHHS UP program. So the Endure and the BD2K program, they're similar to this great program in that both are institutional partnerships involving collaboration between a research-intensive and diversity-serving institution. The BD2K program had the further requirement like ours to have the diversity-serving institution act as the lead. And for the NIHHS UP program, institutional partnerships are not required, but they are encouraged, and the great program does have closer alignment to the programmatic structure of this program compared to the others. And then this R25 great program, it's similar to NHGRI's long-standing R25 DAP program, diversity action plan in that both are diversity research education programs focused at the undergraduate career level. The DAP program does support two other career levels and largely recruits individuals to their research-intensive institutions for a summer or academic research experience, whereas the great program would be a partnership program recruiting a cohort of individuals from within the applicant diversity-serving institution. The programs in this sense complement and enhance the opportunities of underrepresented students based on career-level institution type and educational activities offered. And then lastly this great program will encourage collaborations with universities that have an NHGRI funded T32 program. A couple of our DAP programs that do have a T32 at the same university do collaborate in this way with T32 graduate students getting involved in educational and peer mentoring activities and this has proven to be beneficial. So for mechanism of support and funds anticipated we are requesting RFA set-aside funds. Applications would be limited to 350k direct costs per year. We would utilize the R25 mechanism which is set at 8% indirects. We are considering to fund about three new awards a year for three years and with a with a project period for up to five years. And then the total projected investment for nine awards would be 17 million. So I would like to now shift to council discussion. Some of the items we would particularly like your input on include the partnership idea and our definition of eligible institutions. Thoughts on the two-year requirement of the educational program and then thoughts on the size and scope of the program. So we do feel that this is a modest investment so does it seem like an appropriate level to start with? And then any other points to consider? So three council members took a closer look at this concept. So Drs Rafa Erezari, Wendy Chung and Lisa Parker. And so we asked that these three kick off the discussion. So maybe Rafa do you want to start out? Sure. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay so I think that the general proposal is I really don't have any specific comments are the ones that we discussed earlier which I saw you incorporate it. Some of them. But the comment I want to make relates to my main recommendation which is it relates to trying to improve trying to use data to improve how these programs work. So just quoting from the from one of the papers that the NHGRI has published the field of genomics is affected by the same problematic lack of diversity that plagues and hampers the U.S. research and clinical workforce. And for the past decades the federal government university other non-profit organizations have spent millions probably billions of dollars trying to improve these situations. Since 2001 NHGRI has prioritized funding programs that increase the number of genomic strange researchers from this diverse group. But despite these efforts the genomic research force has seen limited growth in the number of independent researchers from underrepresented backgrounds. So I was encouraged to see that this proposal attempts to attract students at an earlier career stage than previous efforts. So that's that's a change because my first thought was so how is this different from all these other efforts that have we've invested in but haven't really delivered in terms of overall trends and statistics. That I'm optimistic that this particular idea of starting earlier has a potential of improving on previous attempts and the idea of joining institutions as you propose which will give you a much larger pool to to to attract to attract from. So my main recommendation is somewhat specific is that our DSB required to carefully define success metrics and that these metrics are not restricted to short-term goals such as getting into grad school like you've already hinted at that that we have we may get improvements there but then later they they go away. And the data is collected to help determine what parts of these programs work and which don't. So I think we have to start using data to make these decisions about what to fund. Of course we haven't really collected much so that'll happen later but if we require these programs to do it that might be helpful in the future and data collection and in these areas I think I've observed that often it reveals that well-intentioned ideas that sound promising actually have no effect or even have negative effects very surprisingly. So that's why I'm highly recommending that we start doing more of this. It could also I should also say that that analyzing data and looking at what works and what doesn't might inspire new ideas that haven't really been tried out up to now. So I was I was encouraged to hear that you've been using focus groups so that's one way to collect data but I would again also encourage you to have our these also think of the long term of helping NHER long term by by in a way running experiments if you want to call it that or natural experiments to see what works and what doesn't. Thank you for your comments Ratha. So Lisa Parker's hand is up why don't we go to her next. Thank you. So this I'm very enthusiastic about this opportunity. I had four specific points I wanted to raise. One is that the concept document that we read made reference to and you did in your talk as well of the applicant institutions taking the lead having the flexibility to determine the optimal configuration but also having responsibility for the conduct and oversight of the award which on the one hand I think is quite appropriate but on the other hand if these are somewhat less experienced institutions lacking the infrastructure that their partner institution would have that may be off-putting and so that perhaps some provision for mentorship in this regard of the grantsmanship and grants administration or a plan for a mentoring relationship between the partnering and applicant institution would be a welcome amendment or opportunity. Secondly I would hope that there was a provision this this follows up on the previous or complements the previous comment as well that there's an opportunity and maybe metrics development maybe not metrics but that some record is kept of how capacity is developed at the applicant institutions so that this is not the the success of this initiative is not measured solely in terms of the success of the individuals who are educated through the program but the capacity that's developed at the applicant institutions and what that would look like and what success it meets and so ideally there could be some follow-on evaluation of the pipeline developed even after the period of this particular program and both of those thoughts are motivated by my concern that applicant institutions the diversity serving institutions not get an infusion of interest and funds and maybe equipment or activity in general and then somewhat be left to their own devices but that there is a real investment and and a true development of partnership between the institutions partnering but ideally also with NHGRI. A third quick point I recognize that LC education and research pipeline is an option under this concept and wonder whether when a reference is made to the review and assessment of progressive scientific skill sets as a metric whether applicant institutions in particular would recognize that that applies to the development of the skill sets of doing social science research or even philosophical and humanities research and legal research in this area so that being sure that the opportunity for LC research and maybe even a combination of LC and scientific genomic research be encouraged in part because we might imagine and I think have some data to suggest that attention to the LC issues is a way in for many of individuals from underserved groups or diversity serving institutions to be interested in and attracted to genomics and then finally throughout the the term used is undergraduates and undergraduates having two years of experience and so on I wonder whether the experience for post baccalaureate students is also available or continue on following undergraduate graduation even if it the program has begun for an individual during college because that seems also to be a crucial time particularly perhaps for those students who are served by these institutions to bridge them forward into a graduate program and to enhance their applications and so forth with additional education and so having a provision so that people who are graduating seniors or who come to this a little late in their undergraduate career that they don't get left behind when they may in fact be very promising participants in the program. Thanks. All right so to respond to some of your your comments maybe going in reverse order so with regard to post baccalaureate so we really wanted to just focus on the undergraduate career level for this concept we do have the our existing DAP program which does support the post baccalaureate level so that would be kind of a more appropriate program to sponsor that career and I appreciate your points about LC we can make sure we have kind of stronger language when we get to writing the FOA to ensure that LC is definitely a part of this this program and then with regard to you know helping the lead you know organization in terms of the application process and grant writing so you know you know we can we can start with the usual tools right you know the availability of the program officer posting FAQs a pre-application webinar which we often do for programs we'll certainly do that for this one we could think about in that webinar just you know emphasizing extending it and adding some more like grant you know the grant writing process or you know we can we can like think to develop a separate grant writing process webinar we can also point them to you know there's other NIH grant writing workshops and resources that are available and then with regard to and also you know we do have experience with helping investigators who are less familiar with the NIH system not just pre-application but post-war you know especially through our through our H3 Africa efforts so I don't know Jen if you're on if you maybe want to comment through your experience with H3 Africa yeah and I definitely want to say we appreciate the the sort of challenges that institutions that are less familiar with NIH processes and procedures will face and and sort of being prepared to address those well in advance of when applications are due again we do have that experience of sort of bringing institutions along and our grant management branch also has given webinars and seminars about the the technicalities of applications and making sure you have your DUNS numbers and all that so I think that's all good points and also I really appreciate your point about the mentoring role that the the more experienced institution would have because you're right we do want this to be something where there's now a long-term ability for these institutions to be active members of our research community. Sharon? Actually how about if we take comments from Wendy and then come back to Sharon? Okay so I'll just emphasize a couple other points that Rafa and Lisa said. So number one is it drives me nuts as scientists that we don't use data more and so I guess what drives me nuts is that across training programs really it's not just this one but that we don't have systems in place and metrics that we standardize and agree upon to be able to see the return on our investment and I just strongly encourage us to be data driven as we're doing this. The second as Lisa said what I've seen as some of the most productive things come out of this is not only the trainees but as was said the relationships between institutions that actually disseminate and build long-term relationships and even relationships to the communities that are served and so it spreads really successful programs I've seen spread beyond just the trainees. And then the one other point that I want to make is that it is hard sometimes for these institutions and one of the things that I've seen successful is that once the grants are awarded to be able to have some collaborative networking opportunities amongst the leadership in those programs both post award to be able to understand how to manage those grants and also to share resources and in the zoom land space that we're in I've seen many of those training programs even have for instance online zoom that might be shared across institutions but then individual breakout sessions where they can have discussions and talk with their mentors and it just is able to disseminate a lot more information and best practices and best resources that are developed by these programs with a little less pain to the program so anyway I'm very very supportive of this I think it's a great great idea and great program and I think we should do more of this. Well one thing that we do do as you know Wendy is that we do have an annual training and career development meeting where we bring all of our DAP and T32 trainees and PIs together for an annual meeting to network and so we could have that as kind of a minimum in terms of getting this program cohesive. And Tina I think that's great but just as an example through our cancer centers we even do that type of thing but we have weekly meetings believe it or not so you can even do more than that. Yes okay I see Sharon and then Hal go ahead Sharon. Yeah just a couple of practical things as someone who's who's a T32 PI which is that it just says two years. Normally especially for undergraduates you know they may decide this isn't for them and I think you need and you also could have a junior who really has sort of blossomed that you would love to give a year or two. So I would try to build a little bit more flexibility so you don't have people like not thinking they have that they're able to really appoint the best person. Also I think it helps undergraduates to say you know at the end of the first year you have to write up a report and give a plan for your second year of funding and that it's not automatic but you know that you need a plan so I think something like that. The other thing is I would think creatively about what are the obstacles for students applying. Applying to graduate school costs money. Luckily the GREs are sort of disappearing but not for all fields so also thinking about whether any of the funding could actually go into actually supporting application process of the of the trainees to graduate school or other appropriate schools some kind of grant to the student themselves I think could also be a big push not push but remove an obstacle that they might have. Thank you for that. Okay we've got Hal, then Jonathan, then Howard. Go ahead Hal. So just to expand briefly on a few points that have been made one program that I've seen do this particularly well is the Sarnoff Foundation which creates a mentoring network for life. You know once you've been awarded a fellowship you are you know into inside a network that allows you to tap into expertise at every point along your career. The other thing the Sarnoff Foundation does that I think works particularly well is to require people who have been awarded fellowships to then commit to a mentoring relationship with you know years of young people who are coming up in the Sarnoff funding network so you know that requirement of having the people who have been through the program and benefited from it to then share their experience through mentorship really has proven very powerful and I think it's something that should be considered for this program. Yeah we would we would be encouraging like near peer mentoring. Jonathan. Okay a comment what I hope is a very simple question so my comment is that in your presentation you indicated that the partnering institution if they had a T32 and NHG or IT32 that that would be an encouraged thing I think I totally get the advantage or the simplicity of potentially having the students matriculate into that institution or whatever but it seems to me that it might be a little bit limiting to other institutions that haven't had the opportunity to have an NHG or IT32. They might not be considered quite at the same level in terms of looking for partnerships or being part of being a partnership so I'm not sure that I would you know state that explicitly it's it's clearly going to be an advantage the reviewers are going to see that as an advantage anyway so I'm not sure that you do want to limit that. My question is how many students do you think would get appointed on each one of these grants how many students would get supported on these grants. Well we kind of set it at 350k direct costs and then just based on looking at other our 25 educational programs that are out there we were estimating it would support around 10 undergraduates but it's going to vary quite a bit in terms of you know the programmatic structure that is set up. Howard go ahead. Tina this is a very promising concept and so thank you for sharing this. So this particular program is aimed at a diversity-serving institution and partnering them with a higher education research institution so my comment is about the opportunity to expand that to also for-profit institutions because as we all know a lot of genomics research and science has been practiced at many companies and these often these institutions are actually running internship programs just clearly an interest in that way and that might maybe actually potentially allow you to increase the bandwidth of the program either in this version or in a future version. Yeah so well at least for the applicant institution we definitely want that to be a higher education institution but for partnerships we would be open to having companies for-profits and nonprofits serving as a partner. Other questions? Lan go ahead. Is the eight percent indirect like barrier for eligibility for anyone or is that easily absorbed? So I'm not quite understanding your question so the R25 mechanism is set at eight percent indirects does that answer your question? Well I'm just saying if an institute needs complete cost recovery or doesn't have the ability to cover whatever else overhead is needed does that prevent certain people from applying? Yeah I'm not sure and then in terms of you know we'll also kind of set like how much administrative cost they can they can incorporate into their applications and considering it's a partnership we would definitely be kind of allowing a you know like a higher administrative cost than we normally do. Isn't that an NIH rule the eight percent? Yes but I'm just curious like if you want eligibility and people can't apply that's a barrier. Yeah well I'm talking about in the direct cost in terms of what what the maximum allowed administrative cost would be allowed on the grant versus like you know costs going to the to the trainees themselves. So I think Lan this is Caroline just following up on your point I mean it is a it is a limitation of the mechanism and it carries across NIH for lots of different training mechanisms. One of the things we've talked about internally is we see this as a three you know we have three receipt dates so we're not and so one of the things we may see in the first round is are there barriers or issues that come up in doing this and then can we have creative ways to address those barriers? So I don't think we can do a lot of flexibility around this but if we start to find that coming up as something that's a barrier to the program that is something we would then have to see if there's some creative options we could look at. Is that? Yeah no that sounds good I mean the R-25s have existed so you shouldn't reinvent the wheel either like if you network and just ask the question who's not being allowed to apply that would be good to know. Thank you. It's a good point thank you. Can I ask council how important co-localization in terms of geographic localization how important that is between the two partnering institutions? If the student is expected to maintain research progress during the school year it's and the research is going on at the research intensive institution it seems like it's kind of obligatory that they be very closely physically associated. Thank you Hal. Olga did you want to comment or did you have another question? No I want to comment on that same point I would say that it depends I think you know we've had a pretty active program at Princeton just you know with some of the colleges down south in Florida and it's worked great and we had you know they're in the summer here but you can imagine for example especially if it's a computational experimental project they might do experiments at the research intensive institution in the summer then they go back and they either continue some very specific protocols or they can do the computation and analysis back in their institution. I would be as broad as possible with this and really work on the support on all the issues that have been raised not issues but challenges that have been raised rather than make location-based restrictions. Yeah so with regard to geographical constraint and I mean during the academic year because there's also a time constraint on the students as well so it could be in the summer times like Olga was saying that there's the more the focus on the research experiences in any boot camps and then again you know the the important element of this program is also those other educational activities right and so that could be more of the focus like during the academic year right you know where they can participate and you know just other activities like attending seminars, attending the mentors lab meetings and taking any courses and any professional and career development activities. Lisa did you have a comment? I did. Given that some of these students will be inexperienced historically inexperienced maybe within their their own families and social circle with travel with going to another institution with different geographic areas this may be a possibility I think having a broad possibility for geographic partnership would actually be advantageous for some of them also if this truly is to be open to to LC researchers there as well as for some of the other you know computational research and so on as well as whatever happens during COVID if we have shown that we can do a lot with long distance I would say try to keep it as open as possible geographically for a variety of for that variety of reasons. Olga another comment. Sir just a quick question I may have missed it Tina but is there some plan like if a minority institution is trying to apply for this and they don't have a partner institution in mind would the NHGRI be able to I mean maybe not match make but at least make some suggestions of contacts they could pursue? Yeah that's true they can they can contact the program officer who would probably be me and I can make suggestions and you know point to our website where we have listed out all of our T32 programs for one example. Hal? If that's the case is it necessary that a diversity serving institution partner with only one research intensive institution or could it? Oh no open definitely to more than one you know there's you know the endure program there's plenty of examples where there's multiple partners that are involved in this program so definitely. Okay last call for questions I don't see any more hands up all right can I get a motion to approve the concept? In a second? Second. All in favor I'm going to ask you to hold your hands up for five four three two one thank you any opposed or abstaining great thank you thank you Tino. Thank you.