 Thank you, Rudy. I would again like to welcome all of you to this open session of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. As you might be able to tell, we still find ourselves in a pandemic-related situation in which I must give my director's report sitting all alone in my conference room. And consistent with the past two plus years, we're just going to have to make the best of it, but hopefully these things shall change. As with the rest of my open session, my director's report presentation is being videotaped, as you just heard, and that recording will be made available as a permanent archive on NHGRI's website, genome.gov. For those of you who are not familiar with my director's report, which is now a fairly well-oiled machine, I want to make you aware of an electronic resource that we put together in the week preceding council meetings each time. It's analogous to a supplemental material section of a published paper. You can access the current resource at the URL shown at the bottom. The slides I'm going to show throughout my director's report are also available at this site for download either in PDF or PowerPoint formats. And then when there's a relevant document number, such as a website or a particular document that you might want to download associated with the slide, we always indicate that with a little number at the very bottom right. And you can simply access that either the website or download the document at this dedicated website. And all these materials and this entire website is also being permanently archived on genome.gov as part of the historic record of this council meeting. Now, there's going to be a number of other presentations, as always, during the open session of this council meeting. My director's report will deliberately try not to have too much redundancy with topics that are going to be otherwise covered. We will have a guest joining us immediately following my director's report. A relatively new institute director, Shannon Zink, who is the director of NIH's National Institute of Nursing Research, will be here to speak about the future of nursing research, innovation, collaboration, and impact. And after that, we'll be joined by another guest, Marie Bernard, who's NIH's chief officer for scientific workforce diversity. And she's going to be here to talk about a chief officer for scientific workforce diversity update. We then will turn our attention to business for the council to help us with. And so that's going to start first with two concept clearances that will be presented by NHGRI Extramural Program Directors. First, Ebony Madden will give a presentation on a concept clearance on diversity genome research centers. And second, Chris Wellington, joined by Ken Wiley, will present a concept clearance on the analysis, visualization, and informatics lab space for Anvil Program. And lastly, Judy Cho, who is a director of the Charles Broughman Institute for Personalized Medicine at the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will give a workshop report about future directions in genomics and health equity. So with that as a backdrop for what you can expect for the rest of the open session, let me now turn my attention to the director's report and these seven major areas that we've organized my slides as a framework for the topics I want to cover. And we're going to first start off with some general NHGRI updates. And I will start with something truly remarkable. Last month, one of NHGRI's founding staff members and current leaders, Betty Graham, who serves as the director of the Institute's Division of Extramural Operations, reached a truly remarkable milestone, 50, got it, five, zero, 50 years of service in the federal government. Now, Betty has been a member of the NHGRI Extramural Research Program since its inception, being deeply woven into the fabric of all aspects of NHGRI's extramural operations. Betty was the third employee to join the Ben May National Center for Human Genome Research in 1989. Her experience and wisdom about all things related to NIH are deeply respected by her colleagues, both inside and outside of NHGRI. She has a wealth of knowledge, especially about the intricacies of NIH program management. And if that was not impressive enough, Betty's a decorated censor, having won multiple medals on the Veteran World Epi Team and taking home a National Epi Individual Bronze Medal in 2016. Betty Graham is a truly dedicated, remarkably competent and overwhelmingly generous individual. And NHGRI has been fortunate to have her within our ranks, including our leadership ranks for many years. And the federal government has been fortunate to have her as part of the federal workforce for the past 50 years. Oh, by the way, 50 years and counting. So thank you, Betty, for everything that you do. Tina Gatlin, who until this past March was an extramural program director in NHGRI's Division of Genome Sciences, is now a program director in the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering's Division of Interdisciplinary Training. In her over decade long career in NHGRI, Tina managed a portfolio of grants focused on training, genome sciences, and proteomics. She also served as one of the working group coordinators for the NIH Common Fund Protein Capture Regents Program. Over the last several years, Tina was the lead training program director for efforts focused on genome sciences. And in that role, she developed and fostered several NHGRI initiatives centered around promoting career opportunities for trainees and advancing a diverse biomedical workforce. We're grateful to Tina for her many contributions to NHGRI and the NIH Common Fund. And we wish her much success as she continues her work in training and career development. In March, Alexander or Xander Arguillo joined NHGRI as an extramural program director in the Division of Genome Sciences. He oversees an investigator-initiated portfolio in genomic variation, population genetics, and statistical genetics. He is also part of the NHGRI program leadership teams for the Human Genome Reference Program and the Developmental Genotype Tissue Expression or DGTEX Initiative. Xander came to NHGRI from the National Institute of Mental Health, where he was part of the program leadership team for the Psych Incode Consortium and Oversore Portfolio of awards in functional genomics as well as statistical and computational methods development. Now, prior to coming to NIH, Xander was a senior scientific editor at Nature Neuroscience. Now, late last year, NHGRI established the Office of Genomic Data Science or OGDS within the NHGRI office of the director. More recently, we established the initial staffing for this new office. First, Chris Wellington has joined the office as a Computational Genomics and Data Science program director and the new co-lead for the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Analysis Visualization and Informatics Lab Space or ANVIL program. Chris will continue to serve as the point of contact for the Genomic Community Resources G24 identity, U24 funding opportunity announcement, and as a program director for the genomics research to elucidate the genetics of rare diseases for Gregor consortia. Next, Cherjo Sen also joined the office as a Computational Genomics and Data Science program director and serves as a coordinator for the NIH Common Fund Bridge to Artificial Intelligence or Bridge to AI program. Cherjo focuses on artificial intelligence and genomics, workforce development, diversity, equity, and inclusion activities. He also supports training and outreach for the ANVIL program and is leading the educational hub for enhancing diversity in computational genomics and data science. Asaya Yulin is now serving as the NIH Data and Technology Advancement or Data Scholar in the office. In this role, she supports the NIH Cloud Platform Interoperability Effort or NCPI and focuses on development implementation and adoption of ontologies, data models, and standards. And lastly, Elena Gannon serves as the policy advisor for the data science and sharing within the office. And in this role, Elena needs MHRI's Scientific Data Sharing Policy Development oversight implementation. She also works with NIH staff, extramural grantees, and international partners on data sharing and privacy policy issues. And keep in mind that all these individuals in this office are under the leadership of the head of the office, the director of the office, Valentina de Francesca. Moving on, the NHRI Training Diversity and Health Equity or TIDE office, another one of the relatively new offices within the NHRI office of the director, hosted a virtual workshop last month entitled Future Directions in Genomics and Health Equity Research. The workshop's goal was to identify research gaps and opportunities that could help address health disparities and improve health equity in genomics. And over 300 participants attended the workshop, which included a series of presentations and panels and breakout groups on topics such as moving from health disparities to health equity in genomics, current research in genomics and health equity, and structural factors needed to support genomics and health equity research. And the workshop report and video recording is available on NHRI's website, genome.gov. And also, you'll hear more details about this workshop from Judy Cho later in this open session of today's Council meeting. I hope all of you heard about the remarkable advance reported in April of this year, when the telomere to telomere or T2T consortium published the first complete gapless sequence of a human genome, roughly two decades after the human genome project produced the first draft human genome sequence. This remarkable scientific achievement reflected a joint effort that involved the leadership of investigators supported by both NHRI's extramural research program and our intramural research program. And the NHRI office of communications took the lead in communicating this historic achievement to the press and the public, and the announcement was a culmination of nearly a year of planning between NHRI communication staff and dozens of T2T consortium researchers, university and institutional communications offices and members of the press and public. The success of these collective efforts are really nicely represented by various outcomes. For example, between March 31st and April 3rd, NHRI and T2T received mentions in 1074 news articles that collectively have a circulation of 998 million unique visitors per month. NHRI's website, genome.gov, received more than 13,000 page views of the news release and over 7800 page views of the T2T landing page and over 5600 page views on a web profile of NHRI intramural investigator Adam Philippe, who was one of the co-chairs of the T2T consortium. So this was a raging success both scientifically and in terms of capturing a lot of attention by the press and the general public. And part of this was NHRI's Twitter account at genome.gov, which received over 80 million appearances on people's Twitter feeds, more than 3 million views for our NHRI account over the past 30 days, which is by the way a record high, and over 50,000 views for a special T2T animation. In addition, I wrote a commentary that was published in Scientific American about completing the human genome sequence again, which was featured on the Scientific American homepage and received a shout out from Scientific American editor-in-chief Laura as a quote, fascinating and fun, what does it all means piece on today's big T2T announcement and a quote. So moving on to some general NIH updates. First, this guy, Boomerang Francis. Recall that at the February council meeting, I reported that Francis Collins had Boomerang back to NHRI on a full-time basis as a senior investigator in our intramural research program following his remarkable greater than 12-year tenure as the NIH director. So we had him back in the NHGRI house. But his full-time status with us did not even last three months. And in February, Francis Boomerang back out of here agreed to serve as the acting science advisor to President Biden, an acting co-chair of the president's council on advisors and science and technology. Well, I can tell you that as he did throughout roughly 12 years as NIH director, Francis will continue to direct his NHGRI based research laboratory while also providing continued service to our country in yet another crucial scientific leadership role. And then in a related way, Alondra Nelson has been named the acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy or OSTP with plans for her to serve in this capacity until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed. Under her leadership, OSTP's six policy divisions will advance critical administration priorities in science and technology. And Alondra was also named deputy assistant to the president. A renowned scholar of science, technology, medicine, and social inequality, she has already been serving as the deputy director of the newly created OSTP science and society division. And then in February, Robert Kaliff was sworn in as the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or FDA. Previously, Rob served in this capacity from February of 2016 till January of 2017. Prior to joining the FDA, this time he was head of medical strategy and senior advisor and alphabet incorporated and professor of medicine and vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University. Then in April, Norman, or as he's referred to as Ned Sharpless, stepped down as the 15th director of the National Cancer Institute or NCI, a position he had held since 2017. Ned also served as acting commissioner of the FDA for seven months in 2019 before returning to the NCI directorship. At NIH, he championed health equity, developed important programs in data science, and advocated forcefully for policies to ensure continued support for investigator initiated research and diversity in the cancer research workforce. NCI principal deputy director Doug Lowy will now once again serve as acting director until the new NCI director is appointed, serving as acting director as something Doug has a lot of experience doing over the years. And actually in news of today, and I actually just saw the press release or press announcement come into my inbox, today, Julie Gerberding assumes the position of chief executive officer of the foundation for NIH or FNIH. Now FNIH raises funds and creates and manages alliances with public and private institutions in support of NIH's mission. Now Julie previously served as chief patient officer and executive vice president for population health and sustainability at Merck. Prior to that, she headed Merck's vaccine division. Earlier, she was the first woman to serve as the CDC director. Her distinguished career has earned her global recognition, for example, she has been included in Forbes magazine's 100 most powerful women in the world and time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Then on the policy front, NIH is implementing a general provision in the 2022 consolidated appropriations act that makes reporting to NIH by NIH funded institutions mandatory quote, when individuals identified as a principal investigator or key personnel in an NIH notice of award are removed from their position or otherwise disciplined due to concerns about harassment, bullying, retaliation, or hostile working conditions, end of quote. Now previously, NIH lacked clear authority to require funded institutions to report to NIH whether personnel changes to an NIH grant are related to harassment. Passage of this bill into law ensures NIH is made aware when the reason for the personnel change is harassment and therefore strengthens NIH's ability to take the necessary action to ensure in safe work environments wherever NIH funded activities are conducted. This is an important milestone in support of NIH's commitment to do what we can do to end harassment and improve civility in biomedical research. Moving on to budget and appropriations, now at the time of the February Council meeting, the government was operating under a continuing resolution. On March 15th, though, President Biden signed a fiscal year 2022 omnibus appropriations bill into law. The bill included a 5.3 percent increase for NIH along with an increase of no less than 3.4 percent for each NIH Institute and Center. NHGRI received a 3.8 percent increase, bringing our total budget to $639 million in fiscal year 2022. The bill also appropriated $1 billion for our advanced research projects agency for health or ARPA-H, something I'll be talking about more in my next slide. Now, President Biden's fiscal year 2023 budget request was unveiled on March 28th, reflecting the White House's priorities and serving as an opening gambit for the appropriations process for next fiscal year. The budget does not have granularity at the level of individual NIH Institutes and Centers, but does propose a top-line budget of $49 billion for NIH. Now, while this would reflect a nearly 9 percent increase for NIH overall, such an increase would include additional funding for ARPA-H. Now, news outlets report that House and Senate appropriators are meeting to begin discussions on the fiscal year 2023 budget limit, so stay tuned for more information in the months ahead. Now, very much related to the fiscal year 2022 budget is the recently authorized Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health or ARPA-H, which aims to conduct high impact biomedical and health research with the mission, quote, to benefit the health of all Americans by catalyzing health breakthroughs that cannot readily be accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity, end of quote. Now, last summer, the Office of Science and Technology apology, or ROSDP, and the NIH published a commentary in Science outlining a vision for ARPA-H. They also held information sessions and numerous meetings with different organizations and convened a total of 16 listening sessions to get community feedback, including from patient advocacy groups, industry, and scientific professional organizations. Now, as I mentioned in the last slide, the fiscal year 2022 out of us provided $1 billion that will be available for three years to launch ARPA-H. And I can tell you that the ARPA-H director will be appointed by the president. And that was information that came out in March. And then most recently in April, the decision was made to transfer ARPA-H to NIH and to have its director reporting to the HHS secretary. And finally, as I just mentioned, the president requested $5 billion in his fiscal year 2023 budget to continue building ARPA-H. So lots happening, lots more to come with ARPA-H, and this is the latest that we know. So with that, I will now move on to some general genomics updates. In March, Arthur Riggs, a medical researcher whose experiments with recombinant DNA led to the development of synthetic insulin passed away. He was 82 years old. His research across the field of medical science has profoundly improved the health and treatment of millions of individuals with diabetes and cancer and helped to launch the genetic engineering revolution of the biotechnology industry. The International Common Disease Alliance, or ICDA, is a scientific consortium that aims to define barriers to progress in tackling the maps to mechanisms to medicines challenge. Identify opportunities for new projects and facilitate international collaborations. In March, the ISDA held its second virtual scientific plenary meeting, which consisted of presentations and discussions focused on current challenges and successes in advancing genetic maps, international genomics resources, analytical methods, and cellular models for maps to mechanisms to medicines. The new ICDA executive committee was announced as part of the plenary meeting, which now consists of the individuals shown here. And as one of their first activities, the executive committee hosted a series of virtual community town halls in April. And I can tell you that the video recordings of the plenary meeting and the community town halls can be found on the ICDA YouTube channel. The Global Biodata Coalition, or the GBC, was established as a coalition of life sciences and biomedical research funders that aims to optimize the funding and management of biodata resources worldwide. Now, the GBC has two priority aims. First, to better coordinate and share approaches for efficient management and growth of the biodata infrastructure, and two, to stabilize and ensure sustainable financial support for the global biodata infrastructure. And as an important step in its maturation last month, GBC appointed Guy Cochran as its founding executive director. Now, Guy has over two decades of experience working with and leading biodata resources and as an authority on large-scale international genome sequence data sharing. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences recently announced their newly elected members. A particular interest to NHGRI and the genomics community are the individuals listed here. Note two former members of this advisory council among this group, Mark Johnston and Jay Shinduri. And in addition, NHGRI is particularly proud to see Julie Segri on this list. As many of you know, Julie is a senior investigator and branch chief within the institute's intramural research program. So congratulations to all of those individuals. And with that, I will now move on to some summaries about the NHGRI extramural research program. The Centers for Excellence in Genomic Science or SEGS program supports the interdisciplinary research teams for developing highly innovative approaches in genomics research. And NHGRI recently made three awards at institutions that had not previously been part of the SEGS program, all using the designated Emerging SEGS or ESEGS funds. These awards went to the Center for Live Cell Genomics at University of California, Santa Cruz, the Center for Ad Mixture Science and Technology at the University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Genomic Information encoded by RNA, Nucleotide Modification at Wild Medical College at Cornell University. At this past March, NHGRI re-issued the funding opportunity announcement for the SEGS program for an additional three years. The next due date is June 22nd of 2022. The Clinical Sequencing Evidence Generating Research or SEESER program aims to generate evidence related to the clinical utility of genome sequencing with a major emphasis on participant diversity and engagement. In November 2021, SEESER investigators from the Hudson Alpha SouthSeek clinical site published a paper about the utility of genome sequencing as a first-line diagnostic test for critically ill infants. While genome sequencing is becoming less common as a diagnostic tool for pediatric patients, it is less often used for the medical management of infants. Now, the SouthSeek study focused on evaluating the utility of genome sequencing in one of the largest cohorts of infants in neonatal intensive care units, which included 74% racial, ethnic minority, or rural participants. The investigators described the results for 367 infants tested by genome sequencing of these 30% received a genetic diagnosis. Additionally, 57% of the detected genomic variants were not detected by other genetic tests. And this study extends previous work by recruiting participants from ethically and racially diverse backgrounds as well as rural, medically underserved areas. 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 is committed to promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all aspects of its ecosystem from the tools it generates to the workforce it develops. To emphasize its commitment to these values, the ClinGen Ancestry and Diversity Working Group with input from ClinGen's steering committee and other members of the ClinGen Consortium led the development of a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion action plan. This plan provides a roadmap of measurable and actionable goals for ClinGen to pursue in three key domains. First, contribute data, tools, and resources to the genomic knowledge base that will enhance equity in patient care across global populations. Second, develop recommendations for use of population descriptors in genetics and genomics. And third, foster diversity, equity, and inclusion in the ClinGen workforce. ClinGen also assembled the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisory Board to review the content of the generated plan to identify gaps and to provide advice as ClinGen embarks on implementing these goals. And as such, the plan is undergoing review and may be refined in the future. And the plan and advisory board roster can be viewed on the ClinGen website. The Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative, or GGMC, was established in 2016 to create a community of global leaders dedicated to advancing genomic medicine implementation. The organization was started within the U.S. National Academies of Medicine and supported by NIH. Now GGMC aims to realize the full potential of genomic medicine worldwide for improving individual and population health with a mission to identify barriers and solutions, lead and develop programs, and leverage global expertise to bring genomic medicine to low resource settings worldwide through educational programs, policy development, and implementation science. Now GGMC expanded in 2018 to include more observational components, needing together large cohort studies such as the All of Us Research Program, the UK Biobank, and over 70 global cohorts in the International 100K Cohort Consortium, or IHCC. And recently, the GGMC Board of Directors decided to establish GGMC as an organization housing additional programs with a common thread of genomic medicine implementation. It provides financial management and operational support for a variety of programs. Also, its genomic medicine implementation arm was recast as the Global Genomic Medicine Consortium, or G2MC. Other potential programs may be added at a later date. And more information about all of this is available on the organization's 2021 annual report. NHGRI's Technology Development Program continues to enable the development of new and improved technologies fostering genomic discovery. NHGRI in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has three open funding opportunities designed to accelerate innovation and early development in the rapidly emerging field of single molecule protein sequencing. And the next application due date for these activities is June 15th, 2022. NHGRI also supports technology development more broadly through parent funding announcements and through targeted announcements such as the advancing genomic technology development notice of special interest or NOSI. And this genomic technology NOSI uses the standard receipt dates. The recently funded Technology Development Coordinating Center, or TDCC, at the Jackson Laboratory has organized two virtual outreach events. On March 23, NHGRI and the TDCC are hosting a technology area forum entitled understanding cells and context spatial transcriptomics. The event will highlight the strengths and limitations of current DNA sequencing and imaging based methods that are used in spatial gene expression profiling. And then on July 7th, the TDCC will be hosting a virtual symposium on understanding recent advances in genome technology development. Biomedical researchers, learners, and clinical providers will have an opportunity to gain a fundamental understanding of how new genomic technologies are utilized and hear about emerging opportunities and challenges in the field. And both of these events are free and they're virtual and they're open to the public although registration is required. NHGRI Small Business Program awards grants to support the work of genomics companies related to commercialization as well as for technology transfer of academic innovations. NHGRI often showcases our small business grantees through products created by our Office of Communications. For example, genome sequencing techniques and technologies developed by the companies Circulomics, Aramae Genomics, and Dovetail Genomics were instrumental in contributing to the recent generation of a truly complete human genome sequence. And a recent feature article on our website genome.gov tells the story of how their work is fueling such important advances in genomics. NHGRI aims to prepare a talented and diverse genomics workforce by providing both institutional and individual funding through a variety of mechanisms, including individual fellowships and career development awards, institutional awards, and diversity supplements. And programs are offered at the undergraduate, post-fact laureate, and graduate, post-doctoral, and faculty levels. While the seventh annual training and career program meeting was recently held at Duke University, the meeting gathered over 200 in-person attendees and over 150 virtual attendees. And NHGRI supported trainees presented their research and met with other trainees and researchers from across the NHGRI training programs. And the trainees that participated included those from the Centers of Excellence in Ethical Legal and Social Applications Research Program, the Diversity Action Plan programs, the T32 training programs, and individual awardees of fellowships and career development programs. The trainees presented posters, gave lightning talks, and attended scientific lectures presented by their peers. And other highlights included keynote talks, network lunches, and various concurrent sessions. NHGRI has developed a new awards program to recognize extramural investigators who are making sustained and substantial contributions to enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or a DEIA in the Genomics Workforce. The Genomics Workforce DEIA award will recognize an extramural early-stage investigator and an established investigator or group of investigators annually that exemplify their commitment to enhancing the diversity of the Genomics Workforce. To be considered for the award, a nominee must have an NHGRI grant funding and the due date for nominations this September 1, 2022. The program is being administered by the Training Diversity and Health Equity or TIDE Office at NHGRI, which aims to promote workforce diversity, develop and support training programs that provide leadership to reduce health disparities and to foster health equity. And the NHGRI extramural training program currently has three funding opportunities focused on Genomics Workforce Diversity. The Geno research experiences to attract talented undergraduates into the genomics field to enhance diversity, it's a mouthful, also abbreviated great program, supports educational activities encouraging undergraduates from diverse backgrounds, including those from groups underrepresented in biomedical workforce, to pursue training and careers in the scientific, medical, ethical, social, and or legal areas of genomics research. Now applications for this program are due July 1st. The Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation or FIRST program is an NIH Common Fund initiative and it is accepting applications to facilitate institutions in building a self-reinforcing community of scientists through the recruitment of a critical mass of early career faculty with a demonstrated commitment to inclusive excellence. Applications for this program are due July 12th. And the NIH Science Education Partnership Award, or CEPA program, supports pre-kindergarten to grade 12 and informal science education activities that enhance the diversity of the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce and that foster a better understanding of NIH funded behavioral, biomedical, and clinical research and its public health implications. And applications for this program are due July 13th. And with that, I will move on to the NIH Common Fund and other trans-NIH efforts, starting with the H3Africa program. And remember that the central goal of NIH Common Fund's Human Heredity in Health in Africa or H3Africa program is to develop a sustainable and collaborative African genomics research enterprise. Now in its 10th and final year, H3Africa has published over 600 papers with many additional manuscripts in the works. Recent papers highlighted on this slide reveal a previously undescribed gut microbiome taxa, described methylation patterns in adults who were in utero during the Rwanda genocide and provide proposed guidelines for feedback of individual genomic findings in African research settings. In addition to publications, H3Africa investigators have played major roles in the update of consortium recommendations into policies for genomics research in African countries. As one example, groups funded as part of the H3Africa ethical, legal, and social implications research projects have collaborated with their local governments and contributed to national guidelines on human genomics research and community engagement in both Uganda and Botswana. And the final consortium meeting will occur at the end of this month in Nigeria and investigators and fellows will highlight the impact of H3Africa on their careers on research infrastructure in Africa and on advances in genomics research. The Undiagnosed Diseases Network or UDN is an NIH common fund program that aims to improve the level of diagnosis for rare and undiagnosed conditions through a team-based approach. UDN investigators from Baylor Model Organism Screening Center published an article describing model matching, an online investigator matchmaking tool designed to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and rare disease research. As of January 2022, users have access to a database containing 5383 model organism genes that correspond to over 6,000 human genes. The same UDN Baylor investigators contributed to an article describing a novel neurodevelopmental phenotype associated with the mutation in the Neuron Navigator II or NAV-2 gene. While mouse studies show NAV-2 protein is critical in the development of the central nervous system, particularly the cerebellum, little was known about the role of the NAV-2 protein in humans. And by screening exome sequence data from individuals affected with sporadic cerebellar dysplasia, investigators identified the first human with bilionic loss of function variance in NAV-2. And through animal model analyses, investigators were able to identify a potentially conserved role for NAV-2 protein in central nervous system development across multiple species. The NIH Common Fund has initiated a new program of interest to NHGRI, the Sematic Mosaicism Across Human Tissues, or SMOT program. The SMOT network aims to transform our understanding of how somatic mosaicism in human cells influences human biology and health. Five funding opportunities have been released for the various components of the SMOT network shown here in colored boxes. The components include a tissue procurement center and genome characterization centers, technology and tool developments projects, a data analysis center, and an organizational center. The various components will generate and analyze validated data and produce a genomic variant catalog as well as a workbench to facilitate use of these data by the broader scientific community. And the application deadline for all five components is July 8 of this year. And lastly, the mission of the all of us research program is to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs, enabling individual prevention, treatment and care for all of us. The program will partner with one million or more people across the United States to build the most diverse biomedical data resource of its kind, thereby helping researchers gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral factors that influence health. The all of us research program released its first genomic data set in March. And this data release, which features whole genome sequences from nearly 100,000 participants, as well as genotyping array data, genomic variant data, and a suite of genomics analysis tools is available via the all of us researchers workbench cloud-based platform. Now the researcher workbench also includes information from participants survey responses, Fitbit devices, electronic health records, and physical measurements. And keep in mind that a key feature of the all of us research program is its focus on diverse participants with about 50% of the data coming from individuals who identify with a racial or ethnic groups that have historically been underrepresented in research. And this contrasts with the vast majority of existing global genome-wide association study data, which is primarily derived from individuals of European ancestry. So we encourage interested in researchers to register for access to the all of us researcher workbench in order to start using the data and tools for their research. And moving on to the NHSR activities and the areas of communication, policy, and education. In December of 2021, the NHSR history of genomics program hosted a symposium that addressed the history of eugenics and scientific racism and their complex legacies in the modern health sciences. The symposium illustrated the need for more important and more informed public discussions about the connection between existing and emerging genetic and genomic technologies and the historic and present day uses of genetics and genomics and social behavioral research. It also raised issues about how NHGRI as a key funder of genomics research communicate about the state of the science and its limitations. The NHGRI history of genomics program will next host two roundtable meetings to further explore these two themes. A meeting on May 25th will address the question does genetic and genomic screening keep open the door to eugenics? At this meeting panelists will discuss historical and present day eugenics and scientific racism in the context of existing and developing genetic and genomic screening technologies. Then in December, a second meeting will address the promise and pearls of social behavioral genomics at which the discussion will focus on the historic uses of genetics and genomics in social behavioral research, including the historical connections of research into the genetics of social mobility and educational attainment with antisemitism eugenics and scientific racism. On national DNA day this year that is April 25th the NHGRI Office of Communications released a fully revamped version of its incredibly popular talking glossary which included a new name the talking glossary of genomic and genetic terms. This new and improved educational resource now features audio recordings from 37 NHGRI experts to date the new talking glossary has 222 terms of which 142 have new accompanying illustrations and 15 have new associated animations. There are plans for additional terms animations and and illustrations in the coming months and we really encourage you to check out the new talking glossary and please spread the word about its availability. The seventh and final event in the genomics and the media virtual lecture series will feature Magdalena Skipper the Editor-in-Chief of Nature and that'll occur on June 30th. Now this last lecture will cap the highly successful series which featured the trailblazers and science communications shown here and demonstrated various approaches for communicating about genomics as well as the unique challenges and opportunities that different communications media can bring. In terms of our social media presence if you're not aware Ask Dr. Genome is a monthly series of live Twitter Q&As with myself and invited genomic experts. The series offers a way to engage with members of the public that is me namely students educators and science curious Twitter followers who want to know more about a particular genomics topic. Anyone can tweet us a question about the designated genomics topic and we retweet an answer from my account. And in March I was joined by Josh Getty CEO of the all of us research program to answer questions about precision medicine and the generation of diverse genomic data sets. And then in April I was joined by Karen Miga who answered questions about the telomere to telomere consortium's effort to generate a truly complete human genome sequence. And with all this communications activities I'm proud to tell you that the NHGRI Office of Communications was recently nominated for a Golden Post award for best Twitter presence. The Golden Post awards recognize outstanding use of social media by government agencies in the United States and out of more than 400 entries NHGRI was named one of the top five finalists. In addition the NHGRI Office of Communication was also nominated for a shorty award which honors the best of social media and digital specifically for its work on the history of eugenics and scientific racism symposium in December. So congratulations to the Office of Communications. Now as I mentioned earlier April 25th was National DNA Day and like every other year NHGRI hosted several programs and offered educational resources to mark the occasion. This year DNA Day was celebrated virtually throughout the month of April and NHGRI hosted two H3Africa DNA Day presentations featuring the H3Africa researchers shown here. And then on April 25th NHGRI hosted Carter Clinton who's a postdoctoral scholar in the Departments of Anthropology and Biology at Pennsylvania State University for the Louise M. Slaughter National DNA Day lecture. And Carter shared his research investigating New York African burial ground population soil samples to better understand health disparities in living African Americans and discuss the urgency for diversity in genomic databases. And the Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education and Genomics or ISCC PEG focuses on integrating genomic literacy into clinical practice. The group does this by making presentations and professional meetings creating pharmacogenomic continuing education modules and publishing a direct to consumer genetic testing FAQ resource. Now the ISCC PEG also sponsors scholars who work directly with ISCC PEG mentors on projects and so recently a scholar created a gene test 101 app to assist non-genetics healthcare providers navigate the genetic testing process. And the ISCC PEG's 11th annual meeting was held in February and featured keynote presentation by NHGRI acting deputy director Vence Bonham. The meeting also included reports from two new project groups a nursing genomics group and an LGBTQI plus issues in genomics group. And last but not least I have a few updates about NHGRI's intramural program starting with Bill Gall one of the NHGRI intramural investigators who received the erotus or rare diseases Europe lifetime achievement award. This award recognizes those lifelong dedication to addressing the needs of people living with rare and undiagnosed diseases and also honors him for the creation of the undiagnosed diseases program within NIH. So congratulations to Bill. And then NHGRI intramural investigator Neil Hanchard has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. So congratulations to Neil. And then Diana Bianchi who is both an NHGRI intramural investigator but is also as you know director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is a finalist for the Samuel J. Hyman service to America metals also known as the SAMIs. She is a COVID-19 response finalist for initiating critical research to understand the medical implications of the COVID-19 virus and underserved populations. So congratulations to Diana. And one thing I wanted to announce at this open session of an advisory council meeting is something related to a blue ribbon panel review that will now take place for our intramural research program. Now each NIH Institute and Center's intramural research program or IRP is required to undergo a blue ribbon panel review roughly every 10 years. These reviews aim to provide very high-level feedback and general input about the current state and future opportunities of the various NIH's intramural research programs which complements the more detailed investigator by investigator reviews that take place every four years by the Institute or Center's Board of Scientific Counselors. Now NHGRI has conducted two blue ribbon panel reviews of our intramural research program to date. The most recent one was held in 2011 and 2012 when Dan Kastner took the helm as scientific director. While with the recent appointment of Charles Rotimi as the new NHGRI scientific director it seemed an appropriate time to have a blue ribbon panel review of the NHGRI IRP again. And so as such I have assembled the following panel of eight external experts and put them under the leadership of two outstanding co-chairs who are members of this advisory council, Gal Jarvik and Lynn Jordy. And this panel will conduct their review from essentially now May 2022 until a year from now, May 2023. And you can expect that the co-chairs will present their final report from this blue ribbon panel review at the May 2023 meeting of this advisory council. I on the broader NHGRI leadership look forward to the feedback and advice from the panel about our intramural research program which currently has an annual budget in the neighborhood of about $125 million and we're particularly excited to hear their thoughts about the coming decade for our intramural research program. And before I end my director's report I want to again remind you about a user-friendly one-stop shop for staying connected with me and NHGRI and by visiting this webpage through this convenient URL and then scrolling down you get this menu of nine major resources associated with the institute. This includes links to genome.gov website, the genomics landscape monthly newsletter, and my Twitter feed. There's also convenient links to the 2020 NHGRI strategic vision, the NHGRI brochure. As I mentioned our new talking glossary of genomic and genetic terms are building a diverse genomics workforce action agenda, the Genome TV channel of YouTube, and the NHGRI history program set of all histories. And if those sites aren't what you're looking for I gotta do a scroll a little bit further down and you will find a short list of some recommended videos of mine and if you keep going down even further a list of some of my recent podcasts and op-eds. And I hope people find this one-stop shop helpful when trying to stay connected with me and NHGRI. Finally a personal thanks to my many NHGRI staff members who contributed to the slides and associated materials that I just reviewed and as always a group effort to pull this off. Huge amount of information I just conveyed and that also included the efforts of our office communications staff for creating the electronic resource associated with my director's report. And of course a special thanks to my ringleader for helping me for over a decade now do this Chris Rudderstrad. I usually show a picture of Chris at this point but Chris declined providing a photo of this time but rather offered up this photo of which is now it's right up here the entrance to my director's suite where a masked cardboard version of myself has been standing by for the last few weeks as we are welcoming staff back to the physical workspace. So with that I will stop and bring my director's report to a close and I am happy to take any questions if any council members have questions. I will look for hands if there are any questions. All right thank you very much Eric for that report. Dr. Shannon Zank has joined us. She's next on the agenda. Would you like to introduce her?