 Thank you, Rudy. Once again, I want to welcome all of you to this open session of the National Advisory Human Genome Research Meeting. As you can see, the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic has led me to present my director's report while sitting alone in my conference room. In addition and to accommodate a shorter council meeting, my director's report is a bit shorter than the norm. Nonetheless, we believe it contains an informative collection of updates that we wanted to share with you. And as with the rest of the open session, my director's report presentation is being videotaped and that recording will be made available as a permanent archive on NHCRI's website, genome.gov. Now for those new to council meetings, just want to make you aware that there's an electronic resource that gets developed by staff for my director's report, which is analogous to a supplemental materials of a published paper. The resource can be accessed at the URL shown at the bottom of the slide. Meanwhile, the slides that I'm going to show during my director's report are available for downloading and you can access those slides also at this site actually in two formats, both PDF and PowerPoint formats. And then when there's relevant documents or relevant websites associated with particular slide, you will see a document number indicated on the bottom right corner of the slide and that document number of references materials that could be accessed and or downloaded from this webpage. Now this dedicated webpage and all of the linked documents will be archived on genome.gov as part of the historic record of this council meeting. Now there will be a number of other presentations during the open session of this council meeting. I deliberately have tailored my director's report around these presentations, so I'm not going to discuss in detail any of the topics that others will cover. Following my director's report, I'll have a special guest, Mike Lauer, who's the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, will give a presentation on foreign inferences on research integrity, NIH experience, and advice. Next, NHGRI Extramural Program Director, Luis Cubano will present a concept clearance on two related training proposals. One, a pre-doctoral to post-doctoral transition award, F99K00 promote diversity, and one on a short-term research career enhancement award for established investigators, K18, to promote diversity. And then two final presentations will follow. One by Eleanor Carlson, a director of vertebrate genomics group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on perspectives in comparative genomics and evolution, and one by our own Larry Brody, who's director of NHGRI's Division of Genomics and Society on LC research activities across NIH. So for the rest of my director's report, I will cover the seven areas listed here, which have consistently provided a nice framework for me to be able to cover all the material that we wanted to summarize for you. And we will start with some general NHGRI updates. It's really with great pleasure that I announced the appointment of Aaron Ramos as the new deputy director of NHGRI's Division of Genomic Medicine. Aaron joined NHGRI in 2007, shortly after completing her PhD in public health genetics at the University of Washington. Soon after her rival, she stepped up to design and launch the phenotypes and exposures or Phoenix toolkit. She later established and co-chaired the first trans-NIH data access committee for the Genetic Association Information Network or Gain, which provided access to some of the first genome-wide association studies available in D.B. Gap. Even today, Aaron continues to play a key role in data sharing policy and implementation as co-chair of NHGRI's Genomic Data Sharing Governance Committee. And then in 2012, Aaron led the establishment of the Clinical Genome Resource, or CLINGEN, an authoritative central resource for establishing the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research. And so congratulations to Aaron for being appointed the new deputy director of the Division of Genomic Medicine. Renee Sterling is a new program director in NHGRI's Division of Genomics and Society. Renee is a postdoctoral graduate of one of our Centers for Excellence and LC Research, where she focused on public opinion, direct to consumer marketing and bio banking. She has over 15 years of federal service with one of NIH's sister agencies, the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, where she held program officer, senior advisor, and deputy director positions. Through this work, she has acquired expertise in healthcare and public health systems, health policy, and health disparities. Renee will manage a portfolio of grants within the ethical, legal, and social implications, or LC research program, and advise on related matters. NHGRI's Division of Genomics and Society partners with the American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG, and sponsoring two fellowships each year. The Genetics and Public Policy Fellowship provides fellows an opportunity to work in NHGRI's Policy and Program Analysis Branch at ASHG and in Congress. This year's fellow is Emma Alma. Emma recently completed her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, San Francisco. The Genetics and Education Fellowship program provides fellows an opportunity to work in NHGRI's Education and Community Involvement Branch and at ASHG in developing educational programs for a wide range of audiences. The fellow may also do a rotation with a public or a private organization involved in genetics and genomics research and education. This year's fellow is Tiffany Rohl. Tiffany recently completed her PhD in molecular and human genetics from Baylor College of Medicine. Now, as a reminder, October 1, 2020, just a few weeks away, a couple of weeks at this point, will mark the official 30th anniversary of the launch of the Human Genome Project. Recognizing the significance of this milestone, NHGRI's History of Genomics Program and our Communications and Public Liaison Branch have been busy producing outreach materials to commemorate this anniversary and to celebrate the Human Genome Project and its legacy. Starting back in March, we have been showcasing 30 of our oral histories with prominent genomicists, specifically highlighting one per week for 30 weeks, leading up to the 30th anniversary itself. Some of the interviewees are shown here. Then in October, there will be an extensive social media campaign for the 30th anniversary that will feature video testimonials about the impact of the Human Genome Project for many genomics and genetics researchers. A preview of the testimonial from none other than Francis Collins is shown here as a teaser. NHGRI is recording some of the testimonials for this campaign, but we will also be encouraging others to make their own videos that we will then post on the NHGRI Twitter feed. The highlight of our commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Human Genome Project's launch next month will be the publication of the 2020 NHGRI Strategic Vision. Recall that NHGRI embarked on a new strategic planning process in 2018, which we dubbed Genomics 2020. That process involved over 50 events with numerous stakeholders and communities, as well as extensive engagement with all of the institute's advisory groups, in particular this advisory council. Many NHGRI staff members worked tirelessly to collect input along the way and to synthesize that input into a compelling and informative vision for the future of human genomics. We released a draft version of the Strategic Vision manuscript back in April and received extensive and feedback that allowed us to refine it further. The manuscript was then submitted for publication in mid-summer. I am pleased to say that this paper entitled Strategic Vision for Improver Human Health at the Forefront of Genomics is now in press in the journal Nature and will be published in late October. Shown here is the centerpiece figure from that paper, which depicts the four major areas of the new Strategic Vision. I wanted to give my profound thanks to many of you, both inside and outside of the institute who contributed to the Genomics 2020 Strategic Planning process and then the crafting of the 2020 Strategic Vision paper. A special shout out to all of the current and former advisory council members who for the past two plus years have provided invaluable advice, input, and encouragement. And with that, I will move on to some general NIH updates. And let me just start by pointing out that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Francis Collins has been just simply amazing at successfully completing recruitments for new institute directors to NIH, with five being announced since the last council meeting in May. For starters, and shown here, Rick Weitschak, who's familiar to many of us in the genetics and genomics community, has now been appointed the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NIEHS. Rick joined NIEHS in 2010 as the institute's deputy director and then served as its acting director starting in October of 2019. His appointment as NIEHS director began in early June. Located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, NIEHS conducts and supports environmental health sciences in alignment with real-world public health needs and translates science findings into knowledge that can inform real-life individual and public health outcomes. Shannon Zink, who has been selected as the new director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, or NINR. Shannon, a registered nurse and leading nurse researcher, is currently a nursing collegiate professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing. Her research focuses on social inequities and health with the goal of identifying effective, multi-level approaches to improve health and eliminate racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic health disparities. She will begin in her new role as the NINR director later this year. Michael Chiang has been selected as the new director of the National Eye Institute, or NEI. A practicing ophthalmologist, Michael is currently the Knowles Professor of Ophthalmology and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health and Science University and is associate director of the university's KCI Institute. His research focuses on telemedicine and artificial intelligence for diagnosis of retinopathy of prematurity and other ophthalmic diseases. Implementation and evaluation of electronic health record systems and modeling of clinical workflow and data analytics. He will begin his new role as the NEI director later this year. Lindsay Criswell has been selected as the new director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, or NIAMS. Lindsay is a rheumatologist with experience as a clinician, researcher, and administrator. She currently serves as the vice chancellor of research at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is also professor of rheumatology in the university's department of medicine, as well as a professor of oral facial sciences in the School of Dentistry. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and genetics of human autoimmune diseases, particularly rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosis. She will begin her new role as the NIAMS director in early 2021. And finally, Renee DeSousa has been selected as the new director of the National Institute of Dental and Craneo-Facial Research, or NIDCR. Rainer currently serves as the assistant vice president for academic affairs and education for health sciences at the University of Utah. There, she also serves as a professor of dentistry, the Olan-Marty Jensen Chair of the School of Dentistry and professor of neurobiology and anatomy, pathology, and surgery in the School of Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is a devoted mentor and champion of diversity in the biomedical research workforce. She will begin her new role as the NIDCR director later this year. So those are the arrivals. There are departures, or in particular one, later this month, unfortunately, Hannah Valentine, good friend of the institutes, will retire from NIH as the chief officer for scientific workforce diversity. Hannah joined NIH in the spring of 2014. Since then, she has worked to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy for promoting inclusiveness and equity at NIH and throughout the biomedical research enterprise. Her accomplishments include establishing the NIH Distinguished Scholars Program, creating the NIH Equity Committee, developing and implementing the first NIH workplace climate and harassment survey, designing the faculty, institutional recruitment and sustainability transformation, or FIRST program, and guiding the National Research Mentoring Network. She has also led a highly productive research program within the National Heart London Blood Institute. After departing NIH, Hannah will return to California, Stanford University, and her family. Meanwhile, Marie Bernard is the deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, will serve as the acting chief officer for scientific workforce diversity, while the search for a permanent successor is conducted. The American Association for Cancer Research, or AACR, recently recognized the Cancer Genome Atlas, or TCGA, through the AACR 2020 Team Science Awards. Specifically, awards were given to the founding members of TCGA and the current project team. Both groups were recognized during the AACR virtual annual meeting in late June. Now, TCGA was a coordinated program led jointly by NHGRI and the National Cancer Institute, which brought together researchers from diverse scientific disciplines and multiple institutions to create a detailed catalog of genomic modifications associated with specific types of cancer. TCGA has played a major role in advancing cancer genomics as illustrated by the TCGA publications highlighted in this figure. The individual recognized as part of these 2020 Team Science Awards include current NHGRI staff members, Carolyn Hutter and Heidi Sophia, as well as former NHGRI staff members, Jane Peterson, Mark Dyer, Peter Goode, and Brad Ozenberger. And then in May, NIH director and NHGRI senior investigator in our intramural research program, Francis Collins, was named the recipient of the Templeton Prize for 2020. The Templeton Prize is an annual award given to a person who, quote, whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton's philanthropic vision, harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind's place and purpose within it. End of quote. Congratulations, Francis. I would like to remind you that several government websites are available that provide relevant information about COVID-19, such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at NIH. Specifically for NIH grantees and applicants, a COVID-19 resource is available on the NIH grants and funding website. In addition, NIH regularly issues news releases regarding COVID-19 related research findings. And finally, the NIH director, Francis Collins's blog, provides another good source of updated information. And finally, in terms of NIH updates, it is obviously an interesting time on Capitol Hill. Congress is facing an election year, is trying to pass another COVID-19 related supplemental spending package, and is also hoping to pass a fiscal year 2021 budget. All of this before both chambers leave in mid-October to go campaign through election day. Government funding will run out September 30th unless a budget or a continuing resolution, that is a CR, is passed. As of now, the new budget or a new budget is uncertain since Congress is focusing on COVID-19 relief packages. There have been discussions of attaching a CR to the COVID-19 relief package or passing a CR separately. Additionally, the length of the CR is yet to be determined with the expectation being that it would run at least through the election. But there is much debate about how much past the election a CR might extend. Still, there was movement in the House on a fiscal year 2021 labor HHS spending package earlier this summer. The House proposed an increase for NIH of 275 million or about a 0.65% increase. This would give NHGRI an additional 6 million or about a 1% increase. But the House Appropriations Bill also includes $5 billion of emergency funds to help address the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the biomedical research enterprise. These emergency funds would be available for use through fiscal year 2025. Furthermore, that House bill stipulates that these emergency funds would provide each NIH Institute and Center a 7% increase in funding for fiscal year 2021. Now, we have yet to see language from the Senate side though and there are many steps before a final fiscal year 2021 budget may be passed. So needless to say, stay tuned. Moving on then to general genomics updates. Beverly Pagan a longtime researcher at the Jackson Laboratory sadly passed away in June at the age of 81. She died a few months after the passing of her husband Ken Pagan also a longtime Jackson lab researcher and the laboratories director through the 1990s. Beverly revolutionized the study of heart disease and pioneer the promotion of the mouse for cardiovascular research. Her research into the love canal toxic waste dump in New York state has been credited with spurring the creation of the federal super fund program. She was also an early adopter of computational biology and statistical genetics. Our colleagues at the American Society of Human Genetics ASHG have worked with my senior advisor Chris Gunter in her role as the chair of the ASHG online programs and professional education working group to create a podcast series. Each podcast features Chris in a 15 to 20 minute informal conversation with an ASHG member about their career in genetics. For examples are shown on the right. The importance of mentoring has been a common theme throughout these initial episodes as has the reality of career paths that go in directions that were never expected. Listeners are here about the amazing work being done by these interviewees. They're past that got them to where they are now and their personal lives outside the lab including what it is like to be featured in a PBS documentary from council member Wendy Chump. The episodes are free with registration on the ASHG website. In July, the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine or an NASEM published a report from a workshop sponsored by the national science foundation on next steps for functional genomics. The workshop was held to determine research needs to advance the field of functional genomics across the life sciences over the next 10 to 20 years. And then last week, the national academy of medicine, the national academy of sciences and the royal society released a consensus report entitled heritable human genome editing. The report is a culmination of a year of work by the international commission on the clinical use of human genome editing and describes the state of the science, finding that heritable human genome editing cannot currently be performed safely and should not be attempted until safety and efficacy are established. The report also provides a framework for scientists, clinicians and regulatory authorities to consider when assessing clinical applications of heritable human genome editing should a country ultimately decide to permit it. Earlier this summer, the foundation for the national institutes of health or FNIH named formal council member of EVE or GEV, the winner of the 2020 Lurie Prize in biomedical sciences for laying the foundation for the field of single cell genomics, spearheading leading edge technologies that enable a sharper perspective on human cells and applying those technologies to revolutionize our understanding of biology and disease. So congratulations to EVE. And finally, I should point out to you that this past June, June 26th specifically marked the 20th anniversary of that famous White House event at which President Bill Clinton announced the completion of a draft sequence of the human genome. That day will always have a special place in NHGRI's history. And so to commemorate the event, NHGRI's communication and public liaison branch developed the dedicated web and social media content which guarded over 5,000 views. The content included written memories of former NHGRI staff and human genome project researchers who were present at the White House event on that day. Moving on then to the NHGRI extramural research program. NHGRI's technology development program supports the development of new and innovative technologies to enable genomic discoveries and to accelerate the adoption of genomics in medicine. Through funding opportunity announcements, NHGRI continues to fund novel genomic technology development work to catalyze major advances in genomics beyond nucleic acid sequencing. Applications for this funding opportunity are due on October 2nd. The program's newest funding opportunity is for novel synthetic nucleic acid technology development. The purpose of this effort is to improve the quality, compatibility and efficiency of nucleic acid synthesis and production of synthetic constructs at reasonable and decreased costs. Applications for this funding opportunity are due on February 1st of 2021. The program hosted the advanced genomic technology development meeting 2020 through virtual means this past May. The meeting included a session on the application of genomic technologies to COVID-19 talks from grantees and trainees on their technology development, innovation and development work and trainee career development sessions aimed to establish and improve scientific collaborations, foster data sharing and exchange and provide information on funding the next career steps. 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 freely available as a resource to the biomedical research community. The ENCODE phase three consortium published a package of papers in late July which featured 14 papers in Nature and other major journals. These papers are a subset of over 500 ENCODE consortium papers published during ENCODE phase three. The package featured a main paper that highlights the expansion of ENCODE's catalog, identifying candidate regulatory elements and creating a comprehensive registry of these elements. During ENCODE phase three, the search candidate cis regulatory elements by ENCODE tool otherwise known as screen was developed as a user-friendly way to navigate the extensive catalog. The consortium also published a perspective of ENCODE paper and a perspectives of ENCODE paper which provides an overview of the history of the project and its growth during phase three, reflections on the impact of ENCODE and also talked about future directions. The package contains additional publications spanning topics of human and mouse gene expression, regulation, epigenetics, human disease and software tools. The ENCODE consortium will hold a virtual research applications and users meeting for September 30th, October 2nd. The meeting will be held at times compatible for both U.S. and European participants and the sessions will be recorded to broaden access to this meeting. The goal is to expose new users to ENCODE and to provide them with skills to use ENCODE data with guidance from current consortium members. Planned workshops include an introduction to the ENCODE portal, navigating the ENCODE encyclopedia with screen and an interactive introduction to factor book which provides information about transcription factor binding sites in various biological contexts. Registration for this meeting is open and can be completed via the meeting website which is ENCODE2020.org. NHGRI is launching a new initiative in functional genomics called the impact of genomic variation on function or IGVF program. This program aims to develop a framework for systematically understanding the effects of genomic variation on genome function and how these effects shape phenotypes. The IGVF program will consist of five interrelated components that will use emerging experimental and computational approaches to build a catalog of the impact of genomic variants on genome function and phenotypes. Five new funding opportunities are now published in the following areas. Systematic characterization of genomic variation on genome function and phenotype. Defining genomic influence on gene network regulation. Single cell profiling of regulatory element and gene activity in relationship to genome function. Genomic variation and functional data and administrative coordinating center and developing predictive models of the impact of genomic variation on genome function. NHGRI especially encourages applicants who are new investigators, experienced investigators new to genomics, investigators who have not previously participated in an NHGRI consortium or program and investigators from demographic groups or institutions that are considered underrepresented in genomics. Applications for all five funding opportunities are due November 4th of this year. The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science or SEGS program supports the interdisciplinary research teams that are involved in developing highly innovative approaches in genomics research. The fiscal year 2020 NHGRI appropriation included $10 million for a new competitively awarded center-based grant program for emerging Centers of Excellence or ESEGS. In response, NHGRI issued a first notice of change for fiscal year 2020 to amend the original announcement for the SEGS program and to allow an opportunity for institutions that are not previous SEGS grantees to apply for SEGS funding, SEGS funding which would be executed as part of the program balance criterion when making funding decisions. NHGRI has now issued a second notice of change for fiscal year 2021 to fund another round of these SEGS. Specifically, we added an additional receipt date in November 2020 and again emphasized our interest in applicants from institutions that are not previous SEGS grantees. The SEGS program will continue to encourage submission of outstanding and innovative applications from all eligible institutions and we have applications under review for the regular SEGS program and the next receipt date in May 2021 will not change. The developmental genotype tissue expression or DGTEX project is a new initiative that will be co-led by NHGRI and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The goal of DGTEX is to catalog and analyze transcriptional profiles for a wide variety of tissues obtained from neonates, children and adolescents in a post-mortem setting. The aims of the project are to create an atlas of gene expression and biobank on bulk tissues and single cells to analyze differences in gene expression across developmental stages and to develop an LC research program. Two companion DGTEX requests for applications were recently released. The laboratory data analysis and coordinating center will perform two major functions. Serve one, serve as a molecular laboratory and perform basic analyses of genotyping and expression data at the tissue and single cell levels for public release and two, serve as a coordinating center to help monitor study progress and laboratory performance. The biospecimen procurement center will procure tissue from pediatric donors and provide high quality tissue samples for genomic analyses. Applications are due on November 13th and December 3rd respectively for these two funding opportunities. In September 2018, NHGRI established the analysis, visualization and informatics lab space or ANVIL. ANVIL is a cloud-based infrastructure and software platform that provides an analysis and computing environment for unrestricted and controlled access genomic and phenotypic data sets. This past June, the ANVIL training team hosted the Massive Genome Informatics in the Cloud or MAGIC Jamboree for NHGRI's genome sequencing program researchers. The event included an introduction focused on how to use the ANVIL platform and tools to analyze genome sequencing program data. There will be opportunities to learn more about ANVIL through workshops at the Virtual 2020 American Society of Human Genetics or ASHG meeting next month. Specifically, the ANVIL team will be leading workshops focused on how to perform GWAS analysis with Galaxy in ANVIL and how to find and analyze cloud data with the Gen3 Dockstore and Terra platforms. Finally, ANVIL is a designated repository for the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative or HGI data from US contributors. The purpose of HGI is to share and analyze data to learn the genetic determinants of COVID-19 susceptibility, severity, and outcomes. The Genome-Wide Association Studies or GWAS Catalog is a collaborative project between the European Bioinformatics Institute, EBI, and NHGRI. The Catalog provides a searchable and freely available database of SNP trait associations for scientists, clinicians, and other users worldwide. Staff associated with the GWAS Catalog organized a community workshop entitled GWAS Summary Statistics Standards and Sharing Workshop, which was held virtually in early June. This workshop addressed the standards, infrastructure, and incentives required to promote and enable sharing of GWAS summary statistics. The workshop brought together attendees that represented diverse groups of stakeholders, including cohort representatives, summary statistics users, tool developers, resource providers, journal editors, and funders. Recommendations from the workshop included improving the functionality of the GWAS Catalog platform for submitting and curating summary statistics from GWAS studies, standardizing the reporting of summary statistics and related study data in a manner that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible, in other words, fair, and linking GWAS summary statistics data to other relevant data sets and resources, such as DB Gap, EGA, and Anvil. Recommendations of the workshop will be shared in a white paper that outlines the future of GWAS data sharing. The phenotypes and exposures, or Phoenix Toolkit, is a catalog of consensus protocols for measuring phenotypes and exposures in biomedical research. With significant leadership and funding support from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, a new social determinants of health assessments collection, or SDOH, was added to the Phoenix Toolkit. This collection contains 19 protocols to help measure factors that shape behaviors and health outcomes. Examples of the SDOH protocols include concentrated poverty, access to health services and technologies, spirituality, and areas where junk food outlets outnumber healthy food options, also known as food swamps. This collection is expected to provide a common currency for studying social determinants of health and can be used to examine health inequities. The SDOH collection has been highlighted in a recent and a number of COVID-19 related funding notices, including that for the rapid acceleration of diagnostics, underserved populations, or RADX UP program, which seeks to understand factors that led to disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on underserved and or vulnerable populations. The Electronic Medical Record in Genomics or Emerge Network conducts groundbreaking research on how to effectively use electronic records and large biorepositories to enable the integration of genomic information into clinical care. This July, the Emerge Genomic Risk Assessment and Management Network was launched. This five-year phase of Emerge will include 10 clinical sites and a study coordinating center. The network also includes 15 clinical site partners and many affiliates as shown on this map. The network aims to expand best practices and knowledge and effective implementation of genomic medicine by understanding how genomics contributes to an individual's risk of developing disease. The Emerge Genomic Risk Assessment and Management Network will apply and validate polygenic risk scores or PRS in diverse populations, combine PRS results with family history and clinical covariates to determine genomic risk assessments, return results using Electronic Medical Record or EMR to 25,000 diverse participants and assess uptake of risk reduction recommendations and impact of related clinical outcomes to better understand genomic risk in the broader US population. The Clinical Genome Resource or ClinGen evaluates and disseminates the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research. ClinGen's Ancestry and Diversity Working Group collaborated with the Clinical Sequencing Evidence Generating Research or CSER program to investigate clinical geneticists' understanding and use of the terms race, ethnicity and ancestry in their work. The study was recently published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The findings highlight a lack of standard definitions and protocols for the collection and use of diversity measures in clinical genetics and support the need for standardizing and harmonizing the collection of these measures to understand their importance in genomic medicine and precision medicine. Genome Connect is ClinGen's online patient registry where individuals can securely share their genetic and health information for use by researchers and healthcare providers. Genome Connect also provides participants the ability to share their genomic variant data with ClinVar to connect with others who have similar genomic variants to learn about additional research opportunities and to receive updates about their genomic test results. As of April of this year, 2,998 participants from 43 countries have consented to participate in the registry and nearly 1,500 genomic variant interpretations from de-identified Genome Connect participant data have been shared with ClinVar. Given Genome Connect's success in engaging patients in genomic data sharing, the Genome Connect team wanted to make those same opportunities available to patients participating in other registries who are not currently sharing data. To that end, Genome Connect has launched the Patient Data Sharing Program. Thus far, the nine registries shown here on the right are participating in this expanded program. The Implementing Genomics in Practice or IGNITE program consists of a network of five clinical groups and a coordinating center, which are together conducting pragmatic clinical trials to study the implementation of genomic medicine in diverse studies. Despite the unprecedented times related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the network recently launched the trial genetic testing to understand renal disease disparities across the US or guard US. The trial is studying whether knowledge that a participant is positive for a high-risk genomic variant in ApoL-1, a gene associated with chronic kidney disease, results in a change in blood pressure management. The study aims to enroll over 5,000 African-American participants as high-risk ApoL-1 genotypes are disproportionately present in this population. Four clinical sites have been activated with several more planned for activation over the next few months. The first patient was randomized into the trial in early July and over 100 participants have been enrolled so far. Though COVID-19 delayed site activation enrollments by a few months, the IGNITE network is working to safely and effectively recruit participants into the study. This past June and July, the new R01 and R21 funding opportunities in genomic medicine and genetic counseling were published. The advancing genomic medicine research opportunities are soliciting applications that stimulate innovation and advance understanding of when, where, and how best to implement genomic information and technologies in clinical care. The first application due date was this past August with the next due date in March of 2021 and the last in March of 2023. The investigator initiated research on genetic counseling processes and practices opportunities are soliciting applications to assess strategies to optimize the counseling process in the context of limited resources. The first application due date is in October with a second date in July of 2021. Proposed projects for all funding opportunities should be broadly applicable to the genomic medicine as a field and strongly encouraged to include ancestrally diverse and underrepresented participants and populations. The ethical, legal and social implications are LC research program supports research that anticipates, explores and addresses implications of genomics for individuals, families and communities. NHGRI along with nine other NIH institutes and centers and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research recently updated three LC program announcements or PARs inviting a wide range of applications for studying the ethical, legal and social applications of human genomics research. For large multidisciplinary studies that are building on preliminary data and require funding beyond two years, applicants should consider the LC-R01 PAR. For small projects that are exploratory in nature or designed to generate pilot data, applicants should consider the LC-R21 PAR. For very small projects such as those involving single investigators, focused conceptual or analytical studies or secondary data analyses, applicants should consider the LC-R03 PAR. Of note, the three annual application due dates are different from the standard NIH due dates. For all three PARs, the application due dates are in October, February and June from 2021 through 2023. NHGRI offers training and career development support through a variety of mechanisms including individual fellowship and career development awards, institutional awards and diversity and reentry supplements. Our programs offer opportunities at the undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, graduate, postdoctoral and faculty levels. The program continues to grow with new T32 awards. The T32 programs funded by NHGRI date back to 1995. In fiscal year 2020, six T32 programs successfully renewed shown in the first six rows of this table. The last row reflects the seventh T32 that represents a new program at the University of Connecticut which will support pre-doctoral scientists and will focus on computational genomics. The seven training grants will complement the 21 other T32 programs currently funded by NHGRI. And finally for NHGRI, the Genomic Innovator Awards support creative and early career genomics researchers who have played a key role in consortia or similar large team science efforts. The program provides flexible funding that allows these investigators to pursue highly innovative research in all areas of genomics relevant to NHGRI's mission. NHGRI recently announced the second set of Genomic Innovator Awards to the 12 promising investigators listed here. The grants will support a range of different research projects including the development of a variety of innovative tools and computational methods for genomics research and investigation of genomic variation in American Indian and Alaska native people in genes important for drug response and studies related to the implementation of genomic testing in clinical settings. The next receipt date for this program is October 30th. Moving on then to the NIH Common Fund and other trans-NIH efforts. The Library of Integrated Network-Based Cellular Signatures or LINCS is a common fund program intended to create a network-based understanding of biology by cataloging changes in gene expression and other cellular processes. LINCS uses computational tools to integrate the diverse information for the development of new biomarkers and therapeutics. The LINCS consortia will be holding its final symposium, virtually on November 19th and 20th. The symposium will highlight achievements of the LINCS program and individual centers over the past 10 years with presentations focusing on how perturbation-based experiments are providing new insights into cell biology and drug discovery. The second half of the symposium will focus on ways the scientific community can access LINCS data and tools. The NIH Common Fund recently released four funding opportunity announcements or FOAs for the Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa or a DSI Africa program. The new Common Fund program is designed as a five-year African-led initiative and is intended to build on previous large-scale NIH collaborations on the continent, including the Human Heredity in Health in Africa or H3Africa program. The DSI Africa will leverage existing data and technologies to develop solutions for the continent's most pressing clinical and public health problems. The FOAs call for applications in four different areas, an open data science platform, a coordinating center, research hubs, research training programs, and finally, ethical, legal, and social applications research. Applications are due in late November and early December. The Human Biomolecular Atlas Program or HubMap is an NIH Common Fund program that aims to catalyze development of an open global framework for comprehensively mapping the human body at cellular resolution. HubMap insights will lead to better understanding of the significance of inter-individual variability, changes across the lifespan, tissue engineering, and the emergence of disease at the biomolecular level. HubMap's first data release occurred earlier this month. These data were generated with healthy tissues from seven organs, heart, kidney, large intestine, lymph node, small intestine, spleen, and thymus. This release features a uniform data analysis pipeline applied on single cell transcriptomics and epigenomic data along with antibody-based images. The release also includes comprehensive metadata that covers all aspects of labeling and prominence, including de-identified donor information, details of tissue processing and protocols, data levels, and processing pipelines. Future releases are planned every six months. HubMap held a functional proteomics virtual workshop last week. The workshop focused on two key questions, how to integrate analysis of proteomics and transcriptomics data, and how to link single cell proteomics datasets together. New awards will start in October of this year, which will almost double the number of HubMap groups and expand the number of organs being studied significantly. Last January, the NIH Council of Councils approved a new $241 million initiative called the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation, or FIRST, program. This is part of the NIH comment fund. The overall objective of FIRST is to create cultures of inclusive excellence at NIH-funded institutions by implementing a set of well-integrated, evidence-based strategies, and then evaluating their impact on pre-specified metrics of institutional culture, inclusion, and diversity. Last month, NIH released Notice of Intent to Publish, two funding opportunity announcements or FOAs for the FIRST program. One funding mechanism will provide opportunities for institutions to develop and implement faculty cohort models for the simultaneous hiring of a diverse group of faculty. The second funding mechanism will support a coordination evaluation center to facilitate consortium-wide activities, lead the development of evaluation strategies and assess the impact and outcomes of the FIRST program. The estimated publication date is September 9th, and the estimated application due date is November 9th. NHGRI strongly encourages investigators in the genomics research community to apply to the FIRST program. Moving beyond the NIH comment fund, specifically to talk about the Trans-NIH All of Us research program, this program of course is building one of the largest biomedical resources that utilizes volunteer participation within the United States to represent its population diversity. Its aim is to gather data from one million or more people living in the United States to accelerate research and improve the health of the nation. In partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine's Human Genome Sequencing Center, the Center for Inherited Disease Research, the Broad Institute, the Northwest Genomics Center at University of Washington, Partners Healthcare and Color Genomics, the All of Us research program has started generating genomic data. The program plans to perform genotyping on over 200,000 samples and whole genome sequencing on approximately 100,000 samples within the next year. Data curation is being performed at the data and research center using the Broad Institute's Terra Platform with the first data becoming available in 2021. Finally, the FDA has now approved the All of Us investigational device exemption in July for return of select information on hereditary disease risk and pharmacogenomics. This past May, all of us opened the Researcher Workbench for beta testing, marking an important step in their effort to engage the research community and accelerate new discoveries. The initial data release features physical measurements and data from surveys and electronic health records. New data will be added about twice a year and over time, this will include data from genomic analyses, from wearables and more. The beta test site is designed for researchers who can code an R or Python. The workbench includes a set of tools to help build participant cohorts, including data sets with customized sets of medical concepts. A help desk and other resources are available to enable researchers to explore and interact with the Researcher Workbench environment. Currently, access is available to researchers with ERA comments accounts whose institutions have signed a data use agreement with the program. You are encouraged to explore the Researcher Workbench and learn how the All of Us resource can contribute to your research. Beta testers are also encouraged to provide feedback to all of us on how well the data, tools and policies are working. Moving on to NHGIR activities and the areas of communications, policy and education. NHGIR's History of Genomics program recently announced the establishment of a special postdoctoral fellowship opportunity to conduct scholarly pursuits related to the history of the field of genomics. This work will be conducted in partnership with the Institute's Intramural Research Program, specifically within the Engagement Methods Unit of the Social Behavioral Research Branch. The selected fellow will produce scholarly writings related to the history of genomics and pursue original research studies with special emphasis on engagement with diverse and underserved groups. Every summer, NHGIR's Education and Community Involvement Branch hosts its annual short course in genomics. And this is a course from middle school, high school, community college and tribal college science educators. In a typical year, about 30 educators travel to NIH to hear lectures and receive teaching resources from NHGRI and NIH researchers and clinicians and other staff. Topics include genetic diseases, DNA sequencing technologies, bioinformatics, gene editing, microbiome studies and ethical issues in biomedical research. Well, not surprisingly, this year's course was held in a virtual format for the first time. The Institute's Communication and Public Liaison Branch pre-recorded key course lectures and students were provided articles, hands-on materials and other resources in advance of the course. More than two dozen educators participated in the summer's short course, all conducted by Zoom. Also during the summer, the Education and Community Involvement Branch worked with the Prince George's County Maryland Youth Career Connect Program and the District of Columbia's Career Academics Network to support career preparedness and science inquiry programming for high school students. The students developed their professional skills and telework etiquette while simultaneously gaining exposure to a variety of genomic careers and applications of genomic technologies. Branch staff also converted CRISPR and DNA sequencing hands-on activities into virtual engagement experiences for middle and high school students. These new materials were used by two STEM virtual summer camps offered by the local Every Girl Can Learning Institute and the Department of Biological Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. And finally, moving on to NHGRI's Intramural Research Program. In July, the Telomere to Telomere Consortium co-led by NHGRI Intramural Investigator Adam Philippi and NHGRI grantee Karen Miga of the University of California at Santa Cruz published a groundbreaking paper in the journal Nature which reported the generation of the first gapless end-to-end assembly of a human chromosome sequence, specifically for the X chromosome. The de novo human chromosome sequence assembly surpasses the continuity of the best available human reference genome sequence. The researchers were able to achieve this feat by using high coverage, ultra-long-grade nanopore sequencing of a complete hydradidiform mole genome combined with complementary technologies for quality improvement and validation. To note this important milestone, the NHGRI's Communication and Public Liaison branch developed multiple products for various platforms. An interview with Adam Philippi garnered thousands of views on YouTube and social media platforms. The branch also drove a successful media coverage campaign with a news release and press coverage that was extensively picked up. Another honor for an intramural investigator, Charles Rotini, another senior investigator at intramural research program has been elected the 2022 president of the American Society of Human Genetics. Charles is an NIH distinguished investigator, director of the NIH Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health and chief of NHGRI's Metabolic Cardiovascular and Inflammatory Disease Genomics branch. Congratulations to Charles for this honor. And then before closing, let me remind you that I can be followed on Twitter at NHGRI underscore director where I communicate regularly about NHGRI and genomics to various stakeholders. And for those of you who wanna hear from me only just like maybe once a month, you're welcome to sign up to receive my monthly email update called the genomics landscape on NHGRI's website genome.gov by subscribing under email updates. And finally, a personal thanks to the many NHGRI staff members who contributed to the slides and associated materials that I just reviewed in the past hour or so for my director's report. As always, a group effort is essential for getting such material together and conveyed efficiently at each council meeting. An additional thanks to the NHGRI communications group and web team for making my director's report into an electronic resource. And then of course a special thanks to the usual ringleader for helping me prepare my director's report. Chris, what I'm trying to show here in the top row middle position, this is actually a screen capture from one of the Zoom based video recordings produced for celebrating the 30th anniversary of the human genome project launch. Members of the NHGRI history of genomics program and communication on public liaison branch can be seen here preparing to videotape Marco Mara of the University of British Columbia who's seen in the upper right corner. And with that, I will stop and pause and take any questions that you might have. Okay, Eric, thank you very much. I don't see any hands going up. So we will move on.