 Thank you, Rudy. I'd like to again welcome all of you to this open session of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. As you can see, the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic has once again led us to need to give a director's report while sitting alone in my conference room here on the NIH campus. And in addition, and to accommodate a shorter council meeting, my director's report is going to be a bit shorter than the norm. Nonetheless, it contains a lot of informative updates that I wanted to share with you. And as with the rest of this open session, my director's report presentation is being video captured and that recording will be made available as a permanent archive on NHGRI's website genome.gov. For those of you who are new to our council meetings, I want to make you aware of the electronic resource that gets developed for each of my director's reports. It's analogous to a supplementary materials section of a published paper. Then the resource can be accessed on the URL shown on the bottom of the slide. Now the slides that I'll show during my director's report are available if you're interested in them either in PDF or PowerPoint formats. And in addition, if you look at the bottom right hand corner of many of the slides, you might find a document number. And if there's a document number, it means that there are documents or relevant websites associated with that particular slide. And that can be accessed and downloaded from this particular webpage with the URL shown at the bottom. And this dedicated webpage and all the link documents are going to be archived on genome.gov as a historic record of this council meeting. Now there's a number of other presentations that'll take place during the open session of this council meeting. And my director's report is going to be tailored around those presentations, so I'm not going to discuss in detail topics that others will be bringing up later. Following my director's report, there'll be two presentations. First, Kari Walinitz will give a presentation. Kari is the NIH Associate Director for Science Policy, and she's going to be here to talk about the final NIH policy on data management and sharing. And then next, Vence Bonham, my senior advisor on genomics and health disparities, will give a presentation about building a diverse genomics workforce, an NHGRI action agenda. And Vence's talk will provide an important context and a background for two presentations that will then follow. Now those two presentations will be concept clearances directly related to NHGRI's new action agenda for enhancing the diversity of the genomics workforce. And so first, Tina Gatlin will present genome research experiences to attract talented undergraduates into the genomics field to promote diversity, something known as the Great Program. And second, Joe DeDial will present grants for new investigators to promote diversity in genomics research. There will then be three more concept clearances presented by NHGRI extramural program staff. First, Jen Troyer will present a concept clearance on non-human primate GTECs. Then Dan Gilcrest will present a concept clearance on computational genomics and data science. And then finally, Adam Felsenfeld will present a concept clearance on molecular phenotypes of no alleles in cells pilot project. And finally, to round out our presentations, Aaron Ramos, the Deputy Director of the Division of Genomic Medicine, will give a presentation and an update about the phenotypes and exposures or Phoenix toolkit. So for the rest of my direction's report, I'm going to cover the seven areas shown here, which for many years now have provided a nice framework for reviewing the topics that we wanted to cover. And let's just start with some general NHGRI updates. Not surprisingly, certainly. The biggest NHGRI news since the last council meeting was the publication of the 2020 NHGRI strategic vision on October 28th of 2020. This 10-page nature paper reflects the final product and culmination of the extensive strategic planning process that took place over the two previous two-plus years. I would personally like to thank all current and former council members for their input and valuable advice throughout the entire strategic planning process, including many important suggestions for the final crafting of this paper. On behalf of NHGRI, I am also deeply grateful to the many hundreds of others who participated in various events and provided input through various means. It is that wide and far engagement that makes these strategic planning processes so critical to the development of NHGRI strategic vision. I thought you'd be interested to hear a bit about the outreach and media coverage associated with the publication of the 2020 NHGRI strategic vision. So web pages on the NHGRI website genome.gov were developed to host the content of the strategic vision in a very dynamic and compelling way. This site contains an immense amount of additional materials related to the entire strategic planning process itself. Accompanying the publication of the strategic vision in nature was a forward-looking commentary that I authored which was published online in Scientific American. Needless to say, NHGRI's Communications and Public Liaison Branch led a robust outreach and media campaign related to the publication of the 2020 NHGRI strategic vision. That effort yielded nearly 48 million impressions but for example I gave interviews and participated in the development of stories by a number of different media outlets including Comical Engineering News, Genome Web, Forbes, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News and WIRE. I was also interviewed for a Genetics Unzipped Podcast. I can tell you that the media became particularly excited about covering the last component of the 2020 NHGRI strategic vision, the 10 bold predictions for human genomics by 2030. I was repeatedly asked in interviews about these predictions more than any other aspect of the strategic vision or even the strategic planning process itself. That focused attention on the bold predictions was actually anticipated by our communication staff and so when they were developing their suite of ideas for promoting the strategic vision, one of the key things they did was to develop a promotional video that would accompany the publication of the strategic vision and so they decided that that video itself should actually feature the 10 bold predictions. So while it's going to make my director's report 3.5 minutes longer, I thought you might enjoy seeing this terrific NHGRI produced video. I know that some of you have seen it and because of meetings you've gone to a workshop where I've shown it but I'm not sure all of you have seen it and I would also tell you as you will hear that we ended up being fortunate to get a narrator who's an accomplished author and an NHGRI friend Sid Munkergy to help us produce this video. So with the magic of my awesome IT staff I'm going to turn this over to them and let Gerald play this video for you. Genomics, which is the study of all DNA in an organism called the genome is changing the way we practice medicine, how we manage and treat some previously incurable diseases and our relationship with society at large. Since the 1950s double helix and DNA have become household words standing in for the historic discovery of the four chemicals that give us life commonly abbreviated as A, C, G and T. Genomics is at an age of innovation and invention like no other all thanks to how strings of those four letters encode the information for creating and operating something as complicated as a human body. Springing forward from the success of the human genome project a massive reduction in the cost of sequencing a human genome and the dawn of the CRISPR gene editing era genomics is leading into an even more audacious future a future that will define our collective lives for decades to come but what could this future look like? Here is a summary of 10 bold and fantastical predictions made by experts at the National Human Genome Research Institute and the genomics community for the next decade of human genomics while most are unlikely to be fully attained by 2030 achieving even one or more of these by that time would have lasting impact for science medicine and society. Prediction one, sequencing and analyzing a complete human genome will become commonplace for any research laboratory. Prediction two, the role of every gene in the human genome will be known. Prediction three, environmental influences on our genome will be routinely used for making predictions about health and disease. Prediction four, genomics will no longer use social constructs such as race in human research studies. Prediction five, student projects involving the study of millions of people's genome sequences will be regularly featured at school science fairs. Prediction six, genomic testing will become commonplace in medicine just like a standard blood test is used now. Prediction seven, it will be readily known if a given letter difference in a person's DNA is clinically important. Prediction eight, a person's complete genome sequence will be available on their smartphone in a user-friendly form. Prediction nine, advances from human genomics will benefit all of society and not just a few. Prediction ten, genomic discoveries and technologies will help cure more genetic diseases than ever before. How do we get there? The National Human Genome Research Institute is committed to leading research to make such predictions a reality. Learn more about the Institute's 2020 strategic vision for the future of human genomics by visiting genome.gov slash 2020SV. Dive deeply into a field that continues to transform medicine and will hopefully continue to bring curiosity, purpose and compassion for people everywhere. Let me give my profound congratulations to the entire NHGRI communication staff for everything they did in promoting the strategic vision and for producing internally that wonderful video. And I hope you will share that video. It's up on YouTube and Genome TV. Please let others know about it if you think they want to see it. I just need to get my slide to advance. There we go. So to keep up the momentum related to strategic planning, NHGRI sought to organize a seminar series for the coming year linked to the new strategic vision. And because of the popularity of those ten bold predictions, we decided to have monthly seminars each featuring one of the ten bold predictions. And the first of those was actually held on February 1st and focused on bold prediction number one, generating and analyzing a complete human genome sequence will be routine for any research laboratory becoming as straightforward as carrying out a DNA purification. And for that Evan Eichler from University of Washington and Karen Miga from University of California Santa Cruz used this prediction as an aspirational theme for their talks highlighting their own research in the context of that theme and speculating about the next decade in their research area. I can tell you that this virtual seminar actually attracted over 550 live attendees and has been seen multiple times in video subsequently. The next seminar will be held on March 8th and will feature bold prediction number two, the biological function and functions of every gene will be known and for non-coding elements in the human genome, such knowledge will be the rule rather than the exception. And the two speakers for this will be Nancy Cox of Vanderbilt University and Neville Sanjana of the New York Genome Center. Now all seminars are being held virtually but they're also open to the public and are being recorded for posting on our genome TV channel of YouTube. And for future seminar dates and speakers visit the series website that you can find on document one. Moving on beyond the strategic vision with some other updates related to NHGRI, the first relates to a departure. Karla Easter who is chief of NHGRI's Education and Community Involvement Branch will be leaving NHGRI this April to join the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Karla will become the first Bro Khan wheel director of education and lead the Department of Education Outreach and Visitor Experience at the Museum. Karla was recruited to NHGRI over 15 years ago as an education specialist and rose to become chief of the Education and Community Involvement Branch. Her work and leading that branch has been nothing short of spectacular, including a major expansion of the Institute's educational programs and significant increases in the visibility and impact of the branch. On the one hand we are truly going to miss Karla at NHGRI, but on the other hand we could not be more excited for her as she moves on to this truly exciting opportunity down to the Smithsonian. In January, Joanella Morales joined NHGRI as an extramural program director in the Division of Genomic Medicine. Joanella will work as part of the Clinical Genome Resource or ClinGen team, manage investigator-initiated grants and develop initiatives focused on the omics of disease. She is interested in the role of human genomic variation in health and disease and in leveraging genomic findings to improve medical care. Now prior to joining NHGRI she served as project manager at the European Bioinformatics Institute, where she developed standardized tools for clinical annotation and genomic variant reporting. She was also a senior curator for the NHGRI EBI GWAS catalog. She holds a PhD in molecular and human genetics from Baylor College of Medicine and a bachelor's and biology degree from the University of Puerto Rico. And we welcome Joanella to NHGRI. On February 12, 2001, many of you will recall that government officials, members of the press, and leaders of the Human Genome Project crowded into a conference room in downtown Washington DC to publicly unveil the major scientific highlights derived from the first examination of the draft sequence of the human genome. A few days later on February 15, 2001, Nature and Science published the major papers describing those findings. Well, NHGRI marked the 20th anniversary of these historic publications through a story in my monthly newsletter, The Genomics Landscape, an update to the NHGRI Human Genome Project Timeline of Events webpage and a joint video interview with Bob Waterston, the former director of the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center and Jane Rogers, former head of sequencing at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. I also recorded my thoughts about the important anniversary in a short video interview. All of these efforts are representative of the ongoing work of the NHGRI History of Genomics program in chronically and featuring major events in the field of genomics. Moving on then to some general NIH updates. For starters, in case you happen to have missed it, the United States is now being led by a new administration. The executive branch in which NIH resides is of course now led by President Joe Biden. I am delighted to remind you that the Biden administration will feature three individuals with strong ties to NHGRI within the White House science team. Francis Collins will continue in his role as NIH director. Eric Lander, well known to NHGRI and to the entire genomics community, will serve as President Biden's science advisor and also director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy or OSTP. President Biden is elevating the role of the science advisor within the White House, including by designating the presidential science advisor as a member of the cabinet for the first time in history. Alondra Nelson, who happens to have recently been a member of the genomics and society working group of this council, will serve as OSTP deputy director for science and society. There have also been some leadership changes at NIH's sibling agencies. In January, Rochelle Walensky began her position as the 19th director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Prevention or CDC. She comes to the CDC from Massachusetts General Hospital where she served as chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School where she served as professor of medicine. Also last month, Janet Woodcock was named acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or FDA. As acting commissioner, Dr. Woodcock oversees the full breadth of FDA's portfolio and execution of the federal food, drug, and cosmetic act and other applicable laws. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has immediately demonstrated their genuine interest in NIH and our mission with several prominent VIPs visiting NIH in person or virtually within a few weeks following the inauguration. For example, on January 26th, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff came to the NIH to talk with researchers and to receive second doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the NIH Clinical Center. On February 3rd, First Lady Dr. Joe Biden paid a virtual visit to NIH on the eve of World Cancer Day to discuss recent advances in fighting cancer. And then on February 11th, President Joe Biden came to the NIH where he toured the Vaccine Research Center, learned about recent NIH progress against COVID-19, and gave a speech about the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps not surprising to any of you, Tony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was appropriately named the Federal Employee of the Year as part of the 2020 Samuel J. Hyman Service to American Medals program, also known as the SAMIs. Tony was recognized for having served as the government's premier expert and spokesperson on infectious diseases during six presidencies, including taking a prominent role in seeking to protect the public from the highly contagious and deadly new coronavirus that has swept through the country and the world over the past year. Congratulations to Tony. In October of 2020, Judith Greenberg, Deputy Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, retired after 45 years of service to NIH. Of relevance to NHGRI, Judith was actually Chief of the NIGMS Genetics Division, from which the NIH efforts in the Human Genome Project first originated. I'd like to remind you that there are several government websites available that provide relevant information about COVID-19, such as those at NIH and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For NIH grantees and applicants, a COVID-19 resource is available on the NIH Grants and Funding webpage. In addition, NIH regularly issues news releases regarding COVID-19 related research findings, and NIH Director Francis Collins' blog regularly provides another good source of updated information. Well, after several continuing resolutions, Congress passed a fiscal year 2021 budget by a wide bipartisan margin in late December. This budget reflects a $1.4 trillion in government funding to secure federal agency operations through September 2021 and a $900 billion COVID release supplement President Trump signed that measure into law on December 27th. Within the fiscal year 2021 Labor HHS spending package, NIH received an increase of $1.25 billion or approximately 3% above the fiscal year 2020 enacted levels. The bill language specifies that, quote, no NIH institute or center shall receive less than a 1.5% increase, end of quote. And so, as such, NHGRI received an increase of $9.43 million or a 1.56% above the fiscal year 2020 enacted levels. Of note, within the COVID relief supplement, NIH secured an extra $1.25 billion to provide research and clinical trials related to long-term studies of COVID-19 and another $100 million for the rapid acceleration of diagnostics or RADx initiative. Well, moving on to general genomics updates. Marvin Frazier, former life sciences division director at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Human Genome Project sadly passed away in November. Marvin worked extensively with NHGRI staff and grantees throughout the Human Genome Project and contributed greatly to the highly collaborative spirit among the project's funders. Following the Human Genome Project he played an integral role in developing the U.S. Department of Energy's Genomes to Life program. During his career he was also the vice president of research of the J. Craig Venter Institute. And then in November, Gert-Jan van Olmen, former head of the Department of Human Genetics of Leiden University Medical Center, also sadly passed away. During his remarkable career, Gert-Jan served as editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Human Genetics, president of the Human Genome Organization, and president of both the Dutch and European societies of human genetics. He was a strong advocate for the sharing and using genetic information and a leading figure in the 1 plus million genomes initiative. Gert-Jan had a great interest in the ethical, legal, and social aspects of genome science as well as in public and professional communication. The American Society of Human Genetics gave awards to three members of the genomics community at its 2020 annual meeting. Mary Claire King received the William Allen Award, which recognizes scientists for substantial and far-reaching scientific contributions to human genetics. Kenneth Lang received the Arnold Matulski Barton Childs Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Education, which recognizes those who have made significant contributions of exceptional quality and great importance to human genetics education. And Ben Neal received the Early Career Award, which recognizes contributions of genetics and genomic scientists in the first 10 years as an independent investigator. Congratulations to all of them. Meanwhile, the National Academies of Medicine recently announced the election of new members of particular relevance to the genomics community and to NIH and to NHGRI are the individuals listed here. And I just like to give a shout out because this list includes council member Wendy Chung. So congratulations Wendy. Similarly, an impressive set of genetics and genomics researchers and NHGRI colleagues were recently elected to be fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, with their names also listed here. Lisa Brooks, a retired extramural program director, is among those elected as a AAAS fellow for her distinguished contributions to human genomic sciences and shepherding the Human PatMap Project and the Thousand Genomes Project to successful completion. And I hope it also doesn't escape your attention. There's a council member listed here as well, Len Pinocchio, also elected to be a AAAS fellow. Congratulations to Len, to Lisa, and to all the others. The International Common Disease Alliance, or ICDA, was launched in 2019 with the goal to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of common diseases by accelerating discovery from genetics maps to biological mechanisms to physiology and medicine. In December, the ICDA held a two-day virtual scientific plenary meeting which featured scientific talks and panel discussions. The meeting served to highlight the ICDA white paper and recommendations and to describe next steps for the organization. Over 700 people attended the virtual meeting and all presentations and discussions are available on the ICDA YouTube channel. Among the scientific, among the science breakthrough of the year went, I'm sorry, let me start again, although the science breakthrough of the year went to the development of the first backed scenes to protect against COVID-19. There were two runners up of particular interest to the genomics community. They were for therapeutic applications of gene editing and scientists speaking out for diversity. And then meanwhile, the scientists top 10 innovations of 2020 included an automated platform for on-demand DNA assembly and amplification, a single cell gene expression system, a spatial gene expression system, and a digital genome engineering platform. Moving on then to the NHGRI extramural program. The human genome reference program or HGRP represents NHGRI's continued commitment to refining and maintaining the human reference genome sequence. Now this multi-component program, which is currently in its second year, aims to generate at least 350 high quality human reference genome sequences, a subset of which will be finished telomere to telomere sequences. To represent as much of human haplotype variation as possible, the high quality genome sequences will be from ancestrally diverse populations. These will be incorporated into a pan genome reference for the community. Year one data from multiple genome sequencing platforms for the first 30 high quality genomes have been released and are available for download in multiple repositories. Last September, HGRP held its kickoff meeting which was held in collaboration with the telomere to telomere or T2T consortium and featured topics such as data production and technologies, samples and representation, and graph genome representations. Now to explain the concept of a pan genome, NHGRI collaborated with the media company Massive Science to produce a video entitled The Human Pan Genome, which I will discuss a bit later in my director's report. Now NHGRI regards comparative genomics as an important research area that can help us maximize our understanding of genome function, something that is part of sustaining and providing a robust foundation for the field of genomics. We also see comparative genomics as an appropriate area for partnerships and collaborations with other communities and agencies. So as part of the comparative genomics program, NHGRI assigned on to the National Science Foundation-led Enabling Discovery through Genomics or EDGE program. This multi-agency initiative supports research to advance the understanding of comparative and functional genomics. Now EDGE actually has two tracks. The functional genomic tools track supports the development of innovative tools, technologies, resources and infrastructure to advance biological research focused on the identification of the causal mechanisms connecting genes and phenotypes. The complex multigenic track supports functional genomic research that addresses the mechanistic basis of complex traits in diverse organisms within the environment, developmental, social and or genomic context in which they function. Meanwhile applications are due on March 16th. Those interested in applying should reach out to program staff listed on the National Science Foundation solicitation page. NHGRI's technology development program continues to expand and evolve enabling new and improved technologies to foster genomic discoveries. New funding and program announcements include the notice of special interest in advancing genomic technology development for research and clinical applications which applies to the parent R01, R21 and under the small business announcements. This notice encourages a broad expanse of technology development research to enable new lines of scientific inquiry and clinical applications in human genomics. The newest initiative, the novel synthetic nucleic technology development request for applications, has an upcoming due date of March 9th. NHGRI seeks to fund research in novel enzymatic biological chemical and physical approaches along with instrumentation for synthetic nucleic acids. The notice of intent to publish the transformative nucleic acid sequencing technology innovation and early development funding opportunity emphasizes NHGRI's investment in innovation and early development for nucleic acid sequencing. These RFA's will be published in the near future. The technology development program hosted a colloquia series this past fall for the first time during which grantees of various career stages presented their research. These talks included reporting on progress of funded technology development efforts along with new related COVID-19 research projects. The advanced genomic technology development meeting will be hosted virtually again this year by Northeastern University in late May. This meeting serves as a yearly opportunity for novel nucleic acid sequencing and genomic technology development grantees to communicate, collaborate, and interact. NHGRI has issued a notice of special interest or NOSI to encourage applications focused on developing novel methods to perform high throughput molecular and cellular phenotyping to interpret the functional consequences of DNA variation. The objective of this NOSI is to stimulate the development of novel high throughput phenotyping assays of high utility, generalizability, and thoroughness so as to expand the utility and the range of molecular and cellular phenotypes that can be examined. The first receipt dates were earlier this month with R01 and R21 applications being accepted using standard receipt dates through January of 2024. Moving on to ENCODE, the goal of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements 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. In fall of 2020, the ENCODE consortium held a virtual research applications and users meeting which had participation from over 500 attendees from the United States and Europe. The goals were to expose new users to ENCODE data and to provide skills using these data. The meeting featured keynote speakers talk from ENCODE consortium members and interactive instructional workshops on ENCODE resources. And recorded meeting materials can be found on the ENCODE portal. The ENCODE portal also hosts information materials from all previous meetings and workshops along with data analyses protocols and standards. The computational genomics and data science program supports advances in cross cutting areas of research related to computational genomics and data science. From generalizable tools and methods, solutions to data storage management and distribution, and interoperability of genomics research approaches. Coming up in April, the NHRI Genomic Data Science Working Group of this Council will host a virtual machine learning and genomics workshop. Now this workshop is being co-chaired by working group and council members Trey Idyker and Mark Craven. The goals of the workshop are to define key areas in genomics for machine learning and to find NHRI's unique role in machine learning research for both genomic sciences and genomic medicine. This event is open to anyone interested in the cutting-edge intersection of artificial intelligence and genomics research. The research is going to kick off with two keynote presentations and then dive into panels exploring topics that include algorithm development, ethical, legal and social implications, data and resource needs, and the clinical applications for machine learning in genomics. Workshop registration is available on the NHRI webpage. The clinical genome resource, or ClinGen, evaluates and disseminates information about the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research. The latest release of the open targets platform includes ClinGen as a source of evidence for genetic associations. The open targets platform is a multi-year public-private partnership that brings together multiple data types and aims to assist users in identifying and prioritizing potential drug targets associated with disease. The open targets platform supports workflows starting from a target or a disease and then shows available evidence for target disease associations. ClinGen is the latest addition to the list, its list of expert curated evidence sources for rare disease genetics that also uses Uniprot and the Genomics England panel app and genes to phenotype. The integration of ClinGen has added 1,055 unique target disease associations which has helped the open targets platform build a new target disease associations and strengthen existing ones. The clinical sequencing evidence generating research or CSER program aims to generate evidence related to the clinical utility of genome sequencing with a major emphasis on participant diversity and engagement. In November, CSER and emerging investigators published an analysis of current sources of discordance across multiple laboratories in genomic variant classification. Referred to informally as the variant Bakeoff 2.0, 158 variants in ACMG secondary findings genes were annotated and independently classified by three laboratories. Following additional review and discussion, the concordance rate was 84 percent compared to 54 percent before review and 71 percent following the first variant Bakeoff. The most common reason for discordance was evidence codes being applied differently. Less common sources of discordance included different use of internal ClinGen guidance and data entry errors introduced by activities specific to this project. This year CSER sites have adapted to the COVID-19 public health emergency and related challenges by relying on telemedicine to continue providing care and remaining contact with providers. While sites were able to eventually continue their studies, some experienced a pause in recruitment. For example, the New York City kid seek study was paused for approximately five months but completed return or results visit at two-fold higher rate compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. The site is also readjusting the recruitment strategy in order to make up for lost time. The International 100k cohort consortium or IHCC was established in 2018 at the request of the leaders of the heads of international research organizations through a collaboration between the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative or G2MC and the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health or GA4GH. Terry Minolio, Peter Goodhand and Jeff Ginsburg recently published a paper providing details about the IHCC in Lancet Digital Health. The paper outlines the goals efforts and benefits of the IHCC and invites leaders of large human cohorts to join the IHCC. The IHCC actually funded six pilot projects and those are listed here in the slide in 2020 to conduct tests of data harmonization and data sharing across cohorts as well as to test scientific hypotheses among the large number of participants with diverse ancestry as well as physical and social environment in different geographical locations. The Ethical Legal and Social Implications or LC Research Program supports research that anticipates, explores, and addresses implications of genomics for individuals, families, and communities. In November, the Center for LC Resources and Analysis or CIRA launched LC Hub co-led by Stanford University and Columbia University in partnership with the Hastings Center and Personal Genetics Education Project, LC Hub serves as a platform for the production, sharing, and use of LC research. The site includes an LC Publications Database, scholarly directory, a research tools database for empirical LC research, a collection of genetics and bioethics policy resources, and a catalog of available LC funding opportunities. A unique feature of LC Hub is their monthly LC Friday forums held on the second Friday of each month. LC Friday forums discuss a wide range of topics examined through an LC lens. Past forums discuss the issues of addressing racism and research and clinical practice and the intersections between genomics and infectious disease. The March forum will consider ethical and legal implications of DNA technologies that impact migrants entering or resident in the United States. All talks are recorded and archived at LC Hub. To listen to the talks in real time and participate in live discussion, you must register in advance on the LC Hub website. In addition, on February 26, LC Hub will launch a new six-week series of themed one-hour networking discussions on LC research. This initial series, called LC Conversations, focuses on presentations that were originally accepted for the 2020 LC Congress, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now following the recommendations of the training task force of this council, NHGRI published two program announcements, or PARs, this past December that have an application due date of May 2021. The PARs are intended to increase the involvement of genetic counselors and data scientists in genomics research. Meanwhile, there are two funding opportunity announcements or FOAs under development, one for an F99K00 mechanism and one for a K18 mechanism, which aims to enhance the diversity of the genomics workforce at the training and faculty level. Moving on then to the NIH Common Fund and other trans-NIH efforts. Starting with GTEX. For more than 10 years, the Common Fund's genotype tissue expression or GTEX project was established to characterize genetic effects on the transcriptome across human tissues and to link those regulatory mechanisms to trait and disease associations. The efforts of the GTEX consortium have led to the development of numerous tools in the establishment of a database and tissue bank that can be used by many researchers around the world. In September 2020, the final set of analyses from the GTEX consortium were published. This was associated with the version 8 data release, which represents the largest atlas of human gene expression and catalog of trait loci to date. For this final phase of the project, 14 manuscripts were published in science, science advances, and non-science journals. And these summarize the results from the analyses of the version 8 GTEX release. Now the version 8 data release includes increased numbers of tissues and individuals, which allows for more accurate mapping of their putative trait causing genomic variants and identification of cell type specific differences in gene expression. The increased size of the data set also provides the power to link genomic variation to gene expression in both cis and trans interactions across the genome. And as a result, cis and trans effects in addition to population and sex specific differences in gene expression can be detected. These findings set the stage for future exploration into the effects of common and rare genomic variants that underlie the gamut of human genomic variation. The library of integrated network-based cellular signatures or links is a common fund program intended to create a network-based understanding of biology by cataloging changes in gene expression in other cellular processes. Links uses computational tools to integrate this diverse information for the development of new biomarkers and therapeutics. Links is now concluding after 10 years as a common fund program and links investigators are finalizing the links resources. The links consortium held its final symposium in a virtual format back in November 2020. The symposium highlighted the impact that links has had on the research community by featuring work from both links investigators and external investigators who have leveraged links resources. Over 700 attendees joined the symposium and video recordings from the links virtual symposium are available on the BT2K links data coordination and integration center YouTube channel. The central goal of the common fund human heredity and health in Africa or H3 Africa program is to develop a sustainable and collaborative African genomics research enterprise. Now in its ninth year H3 Africa continues to make progress on its goal of publishing in international journals with over 440 such publications to date. For example last October findings from H3 Africa's initial large-scale genome sequencing effort were published in Nature. The article presented analyses of whole genome sequences from 426 individuals representing 50 ethno-linguistic groups from the continent reflecting the rich genomic diversity across Africa. The investigators catalogued over three million novel genomic variants, complex patterns of patterns of admixture, evidence of natural selection, and previously unknown migration events. The study represents a major milestone for African genomics research as it was predominantly led by local resource researchers using community resources. Additionally H3 Africa researchers continue to collaborate globally, capitalizing on the virtual format. The 16th H3 Africa consortium meeting held last September included over 150 attendees that span the globe and included participants from outside the H3 Africa community. Many of the international participants gave presentations and participated in discussion panels allowing for a rich exchange of information and ideas. The H3 Africa Rare Disease Working Group has ongoing interactions with ClinGen and two groups recently hosted a three-day workshop together. Topics included gene and variant curation, ClinVar submission, and other ClinGen tools and activities. The 4D Nucleum or 4DN is a NIH Common Fund program whose goal is to study the organization of the nucleus in both space and time. In 2020 the program started its second phase with a focus on understanding the role of nuclear organization and disease and biological processes, for example gene expression. Now this figure from the 4DN marker paper illustrates the three program objectives of mapping, modeling, and function. Last fall NIH issued 30 awards for the second phase focused on chromatum dynamics and function, data integration, modeling, and visualization, nuclear organization and human disease, and health, and new investigator projects and human health and disease in addition to a data center and an organizational hub. And finally 4DN held a phase two kickoff meeting back in December of last year. Moving on beyond the Common Fund to other trans NIH initiatives, starting with all of us, the goal of the NIH All of Us research program is to speed up health research discoveries enabling new kinds of individualized healthcare. To make this possible the program is building one of the world's largest and most diverse databases for health research. In December the All of Us research program began returning genetic results to those participating in the program. Participants currently are given a choice to receive information about their genetic ancestry and a small number of non-health related traits. Over time the program plans to offer information about pharmacogenomic variants and health related genomic variants based on the guidelines of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. All of us plans to make genetic data available to researchers in approximately one year. The All of Us research program has also released updates to the research hub, which includes expanded health data and upgraded tools. Key features of this data release include the first set of Fitbit data as well as information about research participants' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. These COVID related data were collected through a series of survey questions on mental health, social distancing and economic impacts. NIH has released a funding opportunity announcements for a new common fund initiative, nutrition for precision health, which will be powered by the All of Us research program. This initiative aims to generate insights leading to more tailored nutritional recommendations based on individual differences. Now this is actually the first NIH led study to leverage the All of Us participant cohort and infrastructure to expand data collection and drive new discoveries. The six funding opportunities call for organizations to provide leadership in multiple areas, including nutrition science, clinical research design and implementation, metabologenomics, metagenomics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, bioethics and more. Now I would point out that applications are due on April 6th. So moving on to NHGRI activities in the areas of communication and policy and education. And I mentioned this before, but in November, NHGRI's communication and public liaison branch released a short video in collaboration with the science company Massive Science. The video highlights the telomere to telomere consortium's work to complete the genome and render it gapless and the human pan genomes pan genome reference programs efforts to generate reference sequences that embody all of humanity. The video has garnered thousands of views within the last two months. It also received immensely positive feedback on social media from the scientific community and from general audiences who thought the video explained an important genomics topic in a very accessible manner. Also of news in the spring of 2021 and after a seven-year tour of North America, the genome unlocking life's code exhibition is actually scheduled to return to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Now recognizing that much has happened in genomics since its opening in 2013, the exhibition is being updated and refreshed in a few ways to highlight new discoveries and technological advances. So please continue to check the exhibition's website and follow it on social media for the most up-to-date program information, including the actual details about its reopening at the National Museum of Natural History later this year. In November, NHGRI's education and community involvement branch and communications and public liaison branch together launched a Family Health History Awareness social media campaign in honor of Family Health History Awareness Month. The goals of the campaign were to foster a virtual community among healthcare provider educators, improve working knowledge of family health history in clinical informal settings, and share best practices when gathering information. The campaign leveraged Facebook stories, a Q&A session with NHGRI's clinical director Ben Sullivan, and a Twitter chat that reached over 194,000 people and engaged more than 1500 users. NHGRI's Inter-Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education and Genomics, or ISCCPEG, created a new scholars program to facilitate student interactions with healthcare and educator professionals working in genomics education. This program provides selected scholars exposure to the broader genomics community and experts in the field with the opportunity to work on a genetics genomics related education projects under the mentorship of an ISCCPEG member. The appointment is for two years, and each scholar will have their travel funded to attend the annual ISCCPEG in-person meeting. And shown here are the four scholars who were selected in October for the first year of this program, and that was from a pool of 26 applicants. And finally, moving on to NHGRI's Intramural Research Program. In January, NHGRI's Intramural Research Program established the Genomic Science and Health Equity Fellowship Program in partnership with the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Minority Health and Health Equity. This program will prepare fellows to use genetic, genomic, and pharmacogenomic approaches to advance minority health and health equity. Fellows will be trained in research methodology and medical product development processes that facilitate the delivery of drugs, biologic, and devices from the bench to the bedside. The fellowship is currently open for applications, and the selected fellow will start in the summer or fall of this year. And the first fellow will be commented by researchers from NHGRI, from FDA, and from the NIH Clinical Center to pursue genomics research related to blood transfusion support for patients with sickle cell disease. Eligibility requirements and application guidelines for this exciting opportunity are available on the program webpage on genome.gov. Alec Wilson retired from NHGRI in September of 2020. Alec was recruited to the NHGRI intramural research program back in 1994 and until his retirement served as the co-chief of the computational statistical genomics branch. Over the course of his remarkable 40-year career, the overarching goal of Alec's research program was the identification of genomic variants that influence quantitative trait. Of note, Alec will continue to remain involved at NHGRI as a scientist emeritus. Neal Hancher has joined NHGRI as an investigator within the newly named Center for Precision Health Research, formerly the Medical Genomics and Metabolic Genetics branch in the Institute's Intramural Research Program. Neal will head the Childhood Complex Disease Genomics section within the center and will lead efforts to use genomic and genetic data to understand complex pediatric diseases and traits in diverse populations. Neal was previously a faculty member at the Ballard College of Medicine. NHGRI scientific director and director of the Institute's Intramural Research Program, Dan Kastner, has been awarded the prestigious Crawford Prize in polyarthritis by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his pioneering work in establishing the concept of auto-inflammatory diseases. His work is also described in a recent CNN story. And then, on a related note, having served as NHGRI scientific director since October of 2010, Dan Kastner has announced that he will step down as scientific director to focus on his research program and clinical activities. This transition will occur once a new scientific director has been selected and assumes the position. As a result, I am launching a major search to identify the next NHGRI scientific director. Applications will be accepted starting in mid-March. This is an immensely important leadership position at NHGRI with the responsibility for overseeing the entire intramural research program. And it's now greater than $120 million annual budget. Anyone with thoughts about this search, including suggestions of potential candidates, should feel free to contact me directly and I will share that information with the search committee. And then, before closing, let me remind you that I can be followed on Twitter and at NHGRI underscore director, where I communicate regularly about NHGRI and genomics to various stakeholders. And for those of you who want to hear from me once a month, you're welcome to sign up to receive my monthly email update newsletter called the Genomics Landscape on NHGRI's website genome.gov by subscribing under email updates. And finally, and always profound thanks to the many NHGRI staff members who contributed to the slides and associated materials that I just reviewed in my director's report. I could never do this alone. Big group puts it all together. It's essential to have all that information conveyed efficiently at each council meeting. An additional thanks to the NHGRI communications group and web team for making the director's report into an electronic resource and creating the video of our council meeting. And then, of course, a special thanks to the usual ringleader for many years for helping me prepare my director's report, Chris Wetterstrand. She is shown right there. And this is a throwback photo from February 12th of 2001 when Chris held up one end of chromosome one. Well, actually it was one end of a graphical representation of chromosome one at the press conference covering the publications describing the draft sequence of the human genome. And with that, I will conclude director's report and be happy to take any questions or comments that you might have. Any questions for Eric?