 All right. So our next agenda item is a presentation by Vance Bonham, and I think you were going to handle this introduction, Eric. I'm delighted to, and I will do that while we get the PowerPoint set up. So to set a context, you're going to hear from Vance Bonham, who wears many hats at the institute, but among those hats, and has been for many years my senior advisor for genomics and health disparities. More recently, he's assumed the position of the Acting Deputy Director of the Institute, but coming out of the publication of our 2020 strategic vision, Vance was ready to go to, by leading an internal group at the institute, focusing on diversity in the genomics workforce. And he has done a remarkable job, not only at leading that effort that led to an action agenda that he's going to remind you about, that was published in various ways, and communicated in various ways in January of 2021, but really has a lot of follow-on beyond this. And I would also point out that amongst these things has been Vance's instrumental leadership in standing up and now serving as the Acting Director of what is our training, diversity, and health equity office, or TIDE office, which is instrumental in now leading these efforts as well. So Vance is here in a very modest way to talk about remarkable progress he's made in terms of developing an implementation plan, also give a progress report, but I just cannot thank him enough for his incredibly effective, decisive, and robust leadership in everything he's about to summarize. So Vance, for first, thank you, Eric, for those kind comments. And I am so pleased to be here today to really to give an update on the work that's been going on over the last two years at NHGRI by providing this progress report. There has been a lot going on within the last two years since we announced this action agenda in January of 2021. At that time, NHGRI published, put online our action agenda, building a diverse genomic workforce, an action agenda, and started to move forward with our roadmap for the next 10 years and what we want to do to enhance the diversity of the genomic workforce. What I'll present very briefly today is a progress report to give you some update and sense of the activities that we've been involved in over the last two years, but to really to frame where we are today and looking forward to the implementation in the future so that we have a guiding light to how we want to continue to enhance the work that's going on. I want to emphasize a number of times during this brief conversation today that it only this can happen with partnership and that we have been seeking out to work and collaborate with institutes at NIH and other federal agencies, with industry, with others with regards to these activities and we are committed to continue to partner with individuals to enhance the diversity of the workforce. And finally, I want to go with the comment that's often used by the Chief Scientific Workforce Diversity Officer for NIH. It's not a sprint, but a marathon and as I really think about all the work that's going on, it's truly a marathon of moving forward to enhance the diversity of our genomic workforce. But let me just start by giving you just a quick roadmap of some of the things I've gone on. So in April of 2021, Eric established the new Training, Diversity, and Health Equity Office in the Office of the Director. And then we recruited from across our institute seven individuals to be part of that office and to work together to help to move forward the Action Agenda with the other staff here at NHGRI. We are coordinating now all of our extramural training programs with our workforce diversity programs. This is an important part of the work of the new office of really trying to bring together all training that happens within our institute as well as the establishment of a Collaboratory with our intramural training programs here at the institute so that training directors are talking to each other and are helping to guide and work forward to enhance diversity. And we're working with other institutes, professional societies and industry to enhance diversity of the genomic workforce. And finally, we are also and will not focus on today, but we'll come back for another Council meeting to talk to you about the work that we're doing around health equity and health disparities within the Training, Diversity, and Health Equity Office. So what I want to do very quickly is to go through the four goals and to present the goals and identify the objectives and aims that we have for each goals, but talk to you about some of the activities that have gone on over the last two years. So the first goal is to develop and support initiatives that provide early exposure and access to careers in genomics. And with that, we have two objectives that we've identified in the Action Agenda. So we as an institute have recognized that it is extremely important to start early with regards to exposure, awareness, and excitement to the field of genetics and genomics. And I want to acknowledge the great work that's been going on for over 15 years now with our Education and Community Involvement Branch, as well as our Office of Communications around Public Education and Awareness. So this is not new to the institute of exposure of individuals at early in their education and their careers with regards to genomics. But we see this as an important part of the Action Agenda is our targeted work to enhance exposure to individuals early in their careers. So let me just highlight a couple of the activities that have been going on as part of the new Action Agenda. One is we're continuing our partnership and collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, and currently we have a collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture on a program that's really exposing to the public and to young people, individuals who are geneticists and genomicists that are of African ancestry and African American, to provide role models and exposure and talk about the work that's been done by individuals across the country. And second, within our extramural program, we have a number of initiatives, but I want to target two. One is that we are now co-signed on the NIH Science Education Partnership Award, which is the CEPA Award program. And this is a program that is targeted to K-12 education, and we have signed on with a focus on genomics. So we're interested in applications of individuals for the CEPA program who are interested in exposing K-12 education and the public to genetics and genomics. And I also want to highlight some of the work of the sister office with an office director, the data science office, with regards to the Genomic Data Science Community Network, where they have come together and brought a number of academic institutions, tribal colleges, historically black colleges and universities, community colleges together to learn and to become excited about genomic data science. Goal two is to develop and support training programs and networks that connect undergraduate and graduate education to careers in genomics. This is really a core area of our training that we do at NHGRI with regards to undergraduate and graduate education. And here we have identified three objectives that are guiding our work that we are doing in this area. So what I want to do is just highlight some of the activities that are happening in this area. One is our partnership with the American Society of Human Genetics and cosponsoring the Human Genome Scholars Initiative program. We're really excited to be able to work with ASHG in providing opportunities and exposure and experiences for individuals in early career, from graduate students to early career faculty members with regards to genomics and creating a cohort and a network to help them as they are launching their careers. And then within our intramural research program, we have a new summer internship program that the Tide Office has collaborated with the intramural research program, which is called the Immersive Summer Programs for Research in Genomics or iSpring. This program started in 2022 last summer and brought a number of students to campus to work in labs and is now planning for the summer of 2023. So this is a new program within our intramural program as of last year to expand exposure and experiences for underrepresented students within our intramural labs. But if you look at what we're doing in our extramural program, there are a number of efforts and activities that are going on from across our extramural program, across the different divisions and streams within our extramural program. And just want to highlight a few here. The NHGRI predoctoral to postdoctoral transition award for diverse genomic workforce, the education hub for enhancing diversity and computational genomics and data science, the great award that you heard about a little bit earlier from Dr. Matten, the NHGRI diversity supplement program. And then we are working in collaboration with the NIH chief officer for scientific workforce diversity Dr. Marie Bernard and her office and supporting the administrative supplement program that they have launched to recognize excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility in mentorship. So recognizing and providing opportunities for funding for individuals who have been identified as excellent mentors and providing them resources to support their programs. But I want to take a minute and highlight one of the programs that we launched in this last year. The first round of applications were accepted in December of 2022 and that's the Diversity Centers for Genome Research. And this is really an important new area for our institute. It is really the first targeted RFA program for minority serving institutions to establish genomic centers. And these centers will conduct research as well as training but it's targeted to institutions that have not been a part historically of our awardees at our institute. And so we are really excited about this and looking forward to the future of this program. You'll hear a lot more about this program in coming council meetings. I want to just share with you some brief data about our efforts and activities to increase the diversity of the institutions that we fund at NHGRI. And start by talking about minority serving institutions. And as you may know minority institutions are identified as institutions that have over a certain percentage based on the US Department of Education's guidelines of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. And it includes a number of our genomic intensive research institutions that are in that group. But the number of institutions that are minority serving institutions that we fund has increased over the last three fiscal years and you can see that in this bar graph here. But then there are those institutions that are historically based minority serving institutions. Institutions whose mission has historically been to train and educate underrepresented groups or have more than 50% of their student population are from underrepresented backgrounds. And you can see here in the red on the two bars those numbers too are increasing. And we're excited to see this movement that's happening and expect with the diversity genome centers and other programs that we're supporting that those numbers will continue to increase with regards to these new institutions that become part of our genomics community providing both research opportunities for faculty and training for students. So goal three is to develop and support training and career development and research transition programs that lead to independent research and clinical careers in genomics. And in this area we have two objectives that we include as part of the action agenda. And again this is from taking individuals who have gone through their training and helping them along the pathway to that first independent investigator independent position in industry. So leaving education to actually have a position a career within the field. And here too we are doing a number of things as an institute including with our intramural program we have two different postdoctoral training programs that are part of this transition. One is in collaboration with the FDA which is the genomic science and health equity program. And then a new program that is being established this year is the future leaders advancing genomic science and health innovation or flagship program within our intramural program. These are programs that are targeted to postdoctoral trainees within our intramural program. And we're looking forward to having new individuals come into our labs from different institutions and from diverse backgrounds. But also within our extramural program we have a number of efforts. We have the new investigators to promote workforce diversity in genomics, bioinformatics, bioengineering and biomedical imaging research R01 program. We have the NHGRI predoctoral to postdoctoral transition award for diverse genomic workforce. These are efforts that are being led by our extramural program as part of the activities that are going on across our extramural program to enhance workforce diversity. Our final goal is to evaluate the progress toward achieving greater diversity in the genomic workforce. And here we have three specific objectives in this area. And in this area we are beginning to work in collaboration with Dr. Chris Gunter here in the institute in how we will be evaluating all of the programs that are part of the action agenda and guiding those efforts. And we've also been involved in several efforts and activities that are really what I describe as baseline foundational important part of evaluation. One is the we sponsored the human genetics and genomics workforce survey report that Dr. Green mentioned that was led by the professional societies to give basic demographic information about what our workforce is looking like. And then we are working in partnership to develop a toolkit to support evaluation of training programs and tracking systems for trainees for our both our intramural and our extramural training programs to provide training directors some guidance to assist them as they are seeking to evaluate the success of their programs and to follow their trainees throughout their career. So all of this work requires engagement and working with others. And I'm really excited to say that over the last two years we've been involved in a lot of meetings with people to engage and have conversations to listen to them to determine what we need to do as an institute to help guide our efforts. We've had round tables with minority serving institutions to hear in the needs within their institutions and to share with them some of our funding opportunities and activities. We've been working with the professional societies and collaborating with them about how can we work together to actually make a difference. And I just want to thank all of the societies that we've had a chance to work with over the last two years and look forward to continuing to work with them as we go forward. We worked with industry and had meetings with industry to listen to industry about what they see are the needs and what they need from the perspective of the types of expertise and what's missing and the challenges that they have. And I applaud this work that we've been able to do and hopefully we can move forward with new partnerships with industry as we move forward as an institute. And again, we have been working across NIH with other institutes, centers and offices in our activities and appreciate their co-funding and signing on to some of the NHGRI initiatives. I work with the Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity and the UNITE initiative. We're active with both the UNITE initiative and working with Dr. Bernard's office. But we're also thinking to listen to people from the perspective of trainees and new investigators. So at the ASHG meeting in Los Angeles, we had a special meeting just for trainees and early career investigators to listen to them about what they see as the needs, how the institute can help with regards to advancing careers and what are some of the issues of importance. And finally, we've been working across government agencies. I want to highlight that our program with the FDA was identified by the HHS Secretary as one of the health equity identified programs for the department with special recognition from the Secretary. But I want to take just a minute and acknowledge that this requires everyone in the institute's involvement. And I just want to highlight that the activities that I just talked about really are only because of all of the efforts of the program directors and staff and the division directors and office directors in the extramural program in a collaborative way and a commitment to making a change for the field and the work that we do as an institute. So I want to thank them. The collaborations with the intramural office, scientific director and the investigators within our intramural program. And then my colleagues in the office of director, I particularly want to give a shout out to our office of communications and education community involvement for the work that they've done and our colleagues in the policy branch. But last, but I will not say least, because they every day have been working to move forward this agenda are these individuals that are part of the TIDE staff. These individuals are all came from different parts of the institute to work and be part of this. And they include Fay Brown, Amber Jackson, Christina Dalton, Lucia Hendoor, Ebony Matten. Trinnell mostly is a special volunteer and is a AAAS fellow in the Coswood office, Lergetta Schools and Jamil Scott. And I just want to thank them for their hard work. So I want to just close with this timeline. And this timeline identifies a number of the activities that I just talked about. But it just really kind of shows over a two year period of time, a number of new programs, new activities, new efforts that we have as an institute working in partnership with individuals across the genomics community to truly to enhance the workforce diversity. And we're just at the beginning and we look forward to the collaborations. And I particularly look forward to the continued work with my colleagues here in the institute. So with that, thank you. And I'll take any questions. Gerald, can you bring up the image of the participants so I can see if the council members have any questions? I don't have any particular question, but just wanted to congratulate Vence and the rest of the staff on, you know, creating this fantastic framework. And I think that even though it's great, I think it'd be nice to periodically check the metrics so that we can make it even better. But this is a great effort. And I think all of us to take this back to our communities and other colleagues to kind of make sure that this is there's increased awareness of these wonderful programs that have been created. And I think in a few years down the road, we'll see some very good metrics come out of it. And also some great acronyms, their flagship inspired great. So you have a great team creating those metrics, those acronyms. But I think it's a great, great set of programs. Congratulations. Thank you. And we will have metrics and we'll come back to council with detailed metrics on success and based from baseline information, just like with regards to the minority serving institutions I shared with you today and continue to work very closely with you. Steve. Yeah, I just wanted to echo Mr. Carr's comments, but also just asking are you ready to take this show on the road either through, I guess, virtual seminars, institutions or appearing in person whenever you get out? Because it seems to me that one way of spreading the gospel in some ways is actually to meet with congregation. So how can we do this in a more regular fashion? Yeah, I think the answer is definitely yes. And that's really not just the individuals within the Tide office, but I know program directors as well as our intramural investigators in various ways. So I would love to talk to you about specific things or meetings that you think that we should have someone come to or events, but clearly it's going to require that level of engagement and conversations. And I do think one of the positive things about the pandemic is that it has provided opportunities to do things virtually that we would never thought about before. So both in person, which I think is extremely important and particularly having opportunities for students to talk to people from NIH, but also doing things, you know, by Zoom and virtually. We are open and love guidance, recommendations on things that we should be doing, because I know that there are a number of people who are committed to doing that. Certainly, Eric seems to be everywhere at once, so I hope you can take some hints from Eric. Yes. Vince, the iSpring program, the target audience there is high school, college? No. It's the range of the summer internship program in our NIH intramural program, so it goes from high school through medical school, graduate school. The primary target is undergraduate graduate school opportunities, so individual students that can come in and really, you know, get involved in some activities and research in intramural lab. But it's eligible to students starting at age 16. So people apply? Yes. And instructions for doing that on the website? Yes. Instructions are online on genome.gov. The application period has closed for this year, but it will be up again in the fall, and we can make sure Council is aware of that also. All right. Thank you very much, Vince. Okay. Thank you. I think Council, we're going to break for lunch. I want to give people a full 30 minutes, so let's come back. Let's reconvene at 1.40 Eastern time. All right. See you then.