 Okay, good morning everyone. By the way, last night, watching the Super Bowl, but you need to do a little bit more work for counsel. So by about the end of the third quarter, I said, all right, so I do some counsel work. I said in the first half, I've got to congratulate all these Atlanta fans. This is great. So I even made a sticky note and put on the first page director's report to make sure to congratulate all the Atlanta Falcons fans. It just shows you shouldn't put sticky notes quite too soon because crazy things happen and fourth quarter is a football game. So I guess congratulations all Patriot fans for another Super Bowl win. What a game. Any case, as always, and as Rudy mentioned, this is being broadcast live, but importantly, that also involves a lot of good infrastructure we provide behind my director's report to make it as informative as possible and also to make it a valuable part of the historic record for the Institute. In particular, for those who are new to the council, there's this electronic resource, which I hope many of you use. And I know other people do that's associated with director's report analogous to a supplemental materials of a published paper. And you can get to this resource on the URL shown in the slide and all the slides that I'll show during my director's report are available to you either as original PDFs, original PowerPoint format or also as a PDF file. And then when there's an associate document or website or something relevant to a particular side, you'll find a document number on the bottom right hand corner that references materials that can be accessed or downloaded from the website shown here. And then in addition to this video archive, this webpage and all the link materials will be historically archived as a record of this director's report on the Institute's website, genome.gov. Now, there's going to be several other presentations during the open session of this council meeting. I'm going to avoid speaking in too much detail about things that others are going to describe in greater detail. Right after my director's report, Vivian Benazi, will give a presentation about an important trans-NIH effort to develop an NIH data commons. And then after lunch, we'll continue on the data science theme and NHGRI's Valentina de Francesco will present a concept clearance for an NHGRI data sandbox. And next, we'll hear a report from the Genomics and Society Working Group of this council, and that presentation will be made by Lisa Parker. And lastly, and as we promised you, we will be bringing to council a new institute and center directors when we can get them scheduled. And so Deanna Bianchi, who is the new director of the National Institute of Child Health and Development, or NICHD, will give a presentation entitled Building Bonds Between NHGRI and NICHD. And so the rest of my director's report will go through these familiar seven areas, which very nicely provide me ability to summarize the things I think are most relevant, starting with some general NHGRI updates. And let's start with a celebratory one, and you know NHGRI, we love to celebrate anniversaries, so I can't let this one go by. But last month, NHGRI celebrated its 20th anniversary of being an NIH institute, specifically on January 14th of 1997, the National Center for Human Genome Research, or NCHGR, as we used to be known, graduated from center status to become the National Human Genome Research Institute, that is NHGRI. While looking for details about the significance of this promotion, I came across the following statement, quote, as an institute, NHGRI can more appropriately interact with other federal agencies and share equal standing with other institutes at NIH, end of quote. Now personally, I've always thought of this as sort of an upgrade, being analogous to being allowed to eat at the adult table of a family Thanksgiving dinner instead of being relegated to a kid's table. But as NHGRI director, I can tell you, and I joked about this frequently for the past seven years, is that I felt like my life was consumed with dealing with teenagers, having to deal with two of them at home, and then this behemoth one at work every day. But now two of those three have reached 20. And so I'm left with just one teenager to manage at home. Actually, in reality, she's the one that manages me. So that's actually not a true statement. But what I can tell you is I do think that both at home, more importantly, at work, there are excitement. There's also, I think, complexities of dealing with organization of young adulthood. I mean, I do think the institute has palpably changed, certainly in the number of years I've been here. And I do think that there's a lot of characteristic features, even the way we operate, that it feels different. And operationally, it is different rather than being a young institute, being a more of a in the 20s kind of institute. Well, also similarly of historic value, I would point out that after almost 24 years as NHGRI's chief information officer or CIO and chief of the Information Technology Branch, Ed Whitley recently stepped down as a first step in preparing for his retirement next year. As Ed was NHGRI's and actually NHGRI's first CIO and his accomplishments can be seen in every facet of NHGRI's Information Technology Infrastructure for many years. He's well known for his loyalty, dedication and outstanding customer service. Fortunately for NHGRI, Ed will now be avowed to provide transitional leadership for the new CIO. I just want to personally thank Ed for more than two decades of service to NHGRI. Well, the other component of this important transition was the appointment of Joe Henke as the new NHGRI CIO. Joe served as NHGRI's Information Systems Security Officer from 2012 to 2015, but then left to take a leadership role at the Health Resources and Services Administration. That's another department of the Health and Human Services Division as their Deputy Chief Information Security Officer. We were able to recruit Joe back to NHGRI and are now excited to tap into his extensive expertise in Information Technology. So welcome back, Joe. Another retirement last September, Jean Jenkins, who I think is familiar to some of you, retired as the clinical advisor to the Division of Policy Communications and Education. Jean's career span more than 40 years at NIH for 20 years. She was a nurse in the NIH Clinical Center before spending time in the intramural research programs at both NHGRI and NCI. She then closed out her tenure at NHGRI with nearly 14 years of various roles within the Office of the Director and the Division of Policy Communications and Education. Jean was a principal founder for both the National Coalition for Health Professional Education and Genetics and the International Society of Nurses and Genetics. During her time at NHGRI, she created many educational resources and toolkits for various provider disciplines as well as curricula for health professional educators to use informal and informal training. NHGRI is particularly grateful to Jean for her many years of work within the Genomic Healthcare Branch, serving as the epicenter of NHGRI's education outreach to provider communities. Thank you, Jean. In October, NHGRI and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, or NIMHD, co-sponsored a workshop to discuss the use of race and ethnicity data in genomics, biomedical and clinical research and their influence on minority health and health disparities. The workshop's objective was to examine the complex relationships between individual identity, genetics and health, including how these descriptors influence minority health and health disparities research. The workshop explored how research participants diverse backgrounds and experiences can be described in ways that are scientifically and socially meaningful. Participants included genomic, clinical and social science researchers as well as NIH staff, government stakeholders and other experts. The workshop generated some recommendations for the appropriate use of race, ethnicity and other population descriptors in scientific research and reports. And the two institutes are now finalizing a report of the workshop, including a summary of the discussion and recommendations. And that report will be made available to council and posted on Genome.gov. In recognition of the importance of engaging the community and research participants directly, NHGRI recently constituted a new working group of this council. The community engagement in genomics working group includes community leaders and liaisons, health advocates, community-based researchers and health practitioners that represent diverse populations from across the nation. The group was established to engage communities, support NHGRIs and the council's understanding of community needs related to genomics and also to help the institute ensure that genomics and genetics benefit all. The group will be integral to promoting access to and understanding of genomics across diverse communities and will inform the work messages and research portfolio of NHGRI. The Division of Policy Communications and Education through the Education and Community Involvement branch will staff and coordinate the working group's activities. And Shanita Hughes-Halbert and Sharon Plon will serve as council representatives on this working group. Moving on to general NIH directors, and let's just start at the top. Well, with each new administration, presidential appointees and federal agency heads are required to submit resignation letters and vacate their posts to make way for new appointees. In January 19th, we learned that Francis Collins's resignation letter was returned to him and that he will be quote held over and a quote as NIH director, at least for now. There is no additional information on how long he will remain as NIH director, so stay tuned. And then in other relevant news, Dr. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon by training, has been nominated but not yet confirmed to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. To date, he has testified in front of the Senate Education, Labor and Pensions or Help and Finance committees. In these hearings, there was very little mention of NIH actually with most of the focus being on the Affordable Care Act and on Dr. Price's qualifications. Dr. Price has spent the last 20 years in politics, including six terms as a Republican congressman representing Georgia's sixth district. And as with any new session of Congress, there have been some changes in the leadership of committees relevant to NIH. Shown here are some key committees relevant to NIH and their leaders. For committees that directly impact NIH, the positions that have turned over include chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Health Subcommittee. Previously, Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan, held this powerful job. A staunch advocate for the 21st Century Cures Bill, Mr. Upton was term limited out of this committee position. The successor is Greg Walden from Oregon. Mr. Walden is a former chair of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee and a former board member of Oregon Health Sciences University. The Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee will now be led by Dr. Michael Burgess. Dr. Burgess is a physician representing a district just north of Dallas, Texas. He's a frequent visitor of NIH and has previously drafted legislation on a wide variety of NIH issues. And I can tell you he's also a great genomics enthusiast. Major General James Gilman has been named the inaugural Chief Executive Officer of the NIH Clinical Center. Dr. Gilman is a cardiology with extensive experience in commanding the operations of numerous health systems. As CEO, Dr. Gilman will oversee day to day operations and management of the Clinical Center, focusing particularly on patient safety and quality of care, including the development of new hospital operations policies. Dr. Gilman served for 35 years in the U.S. Army, most recently as commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Following his retirement from the U.S. Army in 2013, Dr. Gilman served as Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Military and Veterans Institute in Baltimore until June of last year. In other transitions, Kathy Hudson has departed as NIH Associate Director for Science, Outreach and Policy. During her seven years in this position, she contributed to many significant NIH efforts, including the launch of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, or NCATS, the BRAIN Initiative and the Precision Medicine Initiative. In addition, she led efforts to revise and update the common rule for human subjects research, to modernize clinical trial reporting, and to expand data sharing and to develop appropriate oversight for rapidly moving areas of medical research, including stem cells, chimeras, and gene editing. And in other transitions, Phil Bourne will depart his position as NIH's first Associate Director for Data Science to become the Stevenson Chair of Data Science, Director of the Data Science Institute, and Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Virginia. Phil joined the NIH in March of 2014. In addition to leading the big data to knowledge, or BD2K program, he was instrumental in developing the concept of an NIH data commons, a shared virtual space where scientists can find, manage, share, use, and reuse data, software, metadata, and workflows. He also institutionalized the fair principles to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and established the NIH Data Science, Data Science Workforce Development Center to advance data science education. The new director of the National Library of Medicine, Patty Brennan, will serve as interim NIH Associate Director for Data Science until a new individual is appointed. Well, after over a year of revisions and negotiations in Congress, the 21st Century Cures Act was passed and signed into law by President Obama on December 13th. This bipartisan bill aims to accelerate the discovery development and delivery of new medical cures. Over the course of the next 10 years, $4.8 billion is intended to be provided for specific NIH innovation projects, specifically the Precision Medicine Initiative, the Brain Initiative, the Cancer Moonshot and Regenerative Medicine Research. 21st Century Cures contains over two dozen provisions that affect NIH. Provisions of particular interest to NHGRI and to genomics community more broadly are, one, stipulating that, one, data sharing can now be required for grant recipients that receive NIH funding. Two, for the protection of identifiable and sensitive information, Department of Health and Human Services agencies can now deny Freedom of Information Act or FOIA requests for biomedical information about a research subject if the individual is identified or if there is a risk that the subject can be identified using other available information. And three, privacy protection for human research subjects through a requirement that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services issue certificates of confidentiality to federally funded researchers engaged in research where identifiable and sensitive information is collected. Note that previously these certificates had to be requested by the research institution and the privacy protection provided was then voluntary. NIH has an implementation group working to put these new provisions into place. Moving on to budget, in December Congress passed a continuing resolution or CR to fund the government through April 28th, 2017. December CR keeps the government funded at a relatively stagnant level of $1.07 trillion total. On April 28th, when the CR ends, Congress will likely face a couple of options. They could pass an actual budget or a year-long CR. Technically, a government shutdown is always another option, but we don't want to go there. So likely pass a budget or a year-long CR. But needless to say, operating under a CR is challenging for every federal agency because the lack of a budget prevents an organization from being able to plan in a strategic way much beyond the very short term. Now at the September Council meeting, I mentioned that both the House and the Senate had introduced bills that would reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, and small business technology transfer, STTR programs with some proposed budgetary adjustments. In December, the SBIR or STTR reauthorizations were attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, but these reauthorizations did not include any of the proposed changes. On December 23rd, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Bill, which included the reauthorization for both programs at their current levels. So that's 3.2% of the extramural research budget for SBIR and 0.45% for STTR. The programs will be up again for reauthorization in 2022. On January 19th, the Department of Health and Human Services and 15 other federal agencies issued a final rule to update the common rule for protecting human subjects and research. Now, compliance with most provisions of the rule must begin within one year of this publication date. The revisions aimed to bring the regulatory provisions for protecting human research participants in line with the changing nature of research since the common rule's original publication in 1991. Specific changes aimed to better safeguard research participants while streamlining research oversight and decreasing ambiguity for responsible parties. Now, major revisions in the final rule include improving the informed consent processes with more meaningful consent forms, calibrating the level of review for studies of the risks posed, and allowing broad consent for secondary use of identifiable biospecimens. The final rule does not adopt the earlier proposed revision to require consent for the use of de-identified biospecimens. I'll also note that additional revisions aimed to streamline reviews by requiring the use of a single institutional review board, or IRB, for multi-site research studies and removing continued review requirements for certain ongoing studies. Note that these changes are consistent with the new NIH single IRB policy. Moving on to some regulatory updates, this past November, the FDA announced that it would delay finalizing its draft guidance on laboratory developed tests, or LDTs, as they're known. This guidance would have expanded FDA's pre-market review and post-market surveillance requirements to LDTs. Initially, the agency sought to finalize this guidance before the end of the Obama administration, however, in anticipation of the changes brought by the incoming administration, the agency decided to place finalization on hold for now. Last month, the FDA posted a discussion paper on LDTs to synthesize stakeholder feedback that it had received on the LDT guidance. This discussion paper, while not an official guidance from the agency, lays out potential changes that FDA would make in its approach to regulating LDTs. Additionally, and as I just mentioned, and in fact, I mentioned at the last council meeting that NIH had released a new policy on the use of a single IRB for multi-research, for multi-site research, research in which more than one site conducts the same protocol involving human participants. The new policy was released in June and its original date of implementation was May 25th of this year. However, last month, the NIH Office of Science Policy announced that it would extend the effective date to December 25th, 2017. A new trans-NIH working group led by Aaron Ramos from NHGRI and Steve Sherry from NCBI developed a new tool to support access to genomic data under the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy. The DBGAP data browser provides researchers with view-only access to a compilation of DBGAP data designated for general research use using a simplified controlled access process. The new browser is described in detail in a recent Nucleic Assets Research article, which will point out that former and current NHRI program analysts Kira Wong and Colette Fletcher Hoppe contributed significantly to this effort. The browser eliminates several steps necessary to acquire individual level data through DBGAP. Just like the standard access request process, investigators interested in the browser submit a browser request with their existing ERA or NIH credentials and then agree to the specified terms of use. However, they do not need to write a research use statement since there are specific functionalities built into the browser. Once the request is approved by the home institution and the NIH Central Data Access Committee, the investigator can open the browser and immediately visualize the DBGAP general research use data. A link to the controlled access browser is available on the DBGAP homepage and an accompanying YouTube tutorial provides information on how to submit a browser access request. Now, as an element of broader efforts to enhance and streamline management of data under the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy, the NIH expects to release a request for information or RFI to solicit feedback on the data submission and data access processes associated with DBGAP. The RFI will include policy related questions pertaining to alternate controlled access models that might increase efficiency of the management oversight and use of data institutions, the benefits and risks associated with sharing genomic summary statistics that happens to be a topic of an NIH workshop last May and the potential use of genomic research data held in DBGAP for clinical reference purposes. Now, once published, the RFI will be posted on the NIH Genomics Data Sharing website and will be open for a 45-day public comment period. Laura Rodriguez from the Division of Policy Communications and Education works with the NIH Office of Science Policy on genomic data sharing oversight and she can answer any questions about this RFI that you or your colleagues might have once the RFI becomes available. And lastly, in terms of NIH updates, NIH and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics or ACMG have just established a Genomic Medicine Program Management Fellowship, which is a 24-month opportunity for qualified physicians to acquire credentials and experience in leading genomic medicine research and implementation programs at the NIH and at major medical centers and also at other organizations. The goal of this program is to increase the pool of physicians trained in managing research and implementation programs in genomic medicine. Now, the NIH ACMG Genomic Medicine Program Management Fellowship focuses on working with NIH's Genomic Medicine Research and Implementation Programs and with similar programs within the ACMG. Fellows can also work within the NIH Intramural Research Program. In addition, time is provided for clinical genomic activities at NIH or nearby hospitals and approved electives tailored for each fellow. Two fellows will be selected each year and appropriate stipend plus benefits will be provided through ACMG. Qualified applicants must have graduated from medical or osteopathic school, have a U.S. citizenship and be licensed to practice medicine in the United States. Postgraduate residency training is preferred but is not required. Applications are now open and are due March 1st of next month, in other words. And the fellowship will begin this coming July. Moving on to some general genomics updates. First, a sad one. Last month, Oliver Smithies, a faculty member, the University of North Carolina and a good friend of NHGRIs passed away. Oliver shared the Nobel Prize with Mario Kopecki and Martin Evans in 2007 for developing gene targeting methods in mice. He also invented starch gel electrophoresis in the 1950s. As an indication of his love of science, Oliver continued to be active in research and held NIH grants up until his death. And the field of genomics has truly lost a legend and NHGRI has truly lost a friend. I can't help but tell one anecdotal story. So Oliver was a member of our Intramurals Board of Scientific Counselors, one of the earliest constitutions of that board. When we were probably maybe the first three or four years, the Intramural Program existed. And I vividly remember I was either a tenured track investigator, or maybe just I think I was still a tenured track investigator or barely tenured. And we used to have our board meetings out at Early House in Virginia. And Oliver was an ad-vid pilot and would personally always want to fly his plane up, which actually when you're arranging government travel is not the easiest thing to do because we just prefer you take a contract carrier, not your own. But he insisted and it just turned out that Early House, some of you know Early House, actually has a very small airstrip for being able to fly. And so he did this like I think two or three board meetings. He would just fly in and just show up. It was great. One year he happened though he had a land in the rain and it was a relatively short airstrip. And he did get off the runway. He was fine, but the plane, his plane just went into just some deep mud. And so we sprung into action and we found I think it was like eight or 10 of the strongest postdocs that we had at the instant. They literally all went out and they lifted his plane out of the mud and put it back on the runway and we continued with the board meeting. True story, not making it up. So he was an incredibly valuable input at a very formative stage of our intramural program. Another loss, Alan Rose, is a faculty member at Duke University School of Medicine, passed away in September. Alan is known for his contribution to Alzheimer's disease research. More recently, he implicated a simple sequence repeat in Lou Gehrig's disease. He was Chief of Neurology for over 27 years at the Duke University Medical Center. In addition, he served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at GlaxoSmithKline for about 10 years. Bruce Alberts was recently awarded the Lasker Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for quote, fundamental discoveries in DNA replication of protein biochemistry, for visionary leadership and directing national, international scientific organizations to better people's lives and for passionate dedication to improving education and science and mathematics. End of quote. Bruce has had a hand in various aspects of genomics, especially in the earliest days of planning the human genome project. So congratulations to Bruce. Also congratulations to Huda. One of the 2017 breakthrough prizes in life sciences was awarded to Huda Zagbi for her discoveries of the genetic causes in biochemical mechanisms of spinosolidar ataxia and RET syndrome, findings that have provided insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neurological diseases. Huda's a terrific geneticist and a good friend of NHGRIs. The American Society of Human Genetics gave awards to two members of our community at the 2016 annual meeting. Brendan Lee was awarded the Kurt Stern Award, which recognizes a genetics and genomics researcher who has made significant scientific contributions during the past decade. And Dave Alley was presented the award for excellence in human genetics education, which recognizes someone who has made significant contributions to human genetics education. And both of these outstanding investigators have strong ties to NHGRI, both as grantees and as advisors. Someone else with strong ties to NHGRI is Ewan Burney and the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health recently appointed Ewan to lead its efforts to accelerate medical and research advancements through the responsible sharing of genomic and clinical data. Specifically, Ewan has assumed the position as steering committee chair of the Global Alliance of Genomics and Health. And this is a position he started with in November and we look forward to working with you in this regard. Another familiar face from our community, Levi Garroway, last month left the comforts of Boston and the Broad Institute and joined Lily as Senior Vice President of Global Development and Medical Affairs, specifically for Lily's oncology business. Levi is NHGRI grantee and advisor and is certainly an outstanding physician scientist. In other honors, the National Academy of Medicine recently announced their newly elected members. That list includes the individuals listed here who have notable connections and relevance to NHGRI, including a former council member, some grantees, some otherwise very distinguished geneticist and genomicist. And NHGRI's very own Les Beeseker, a senior investigator within the Institute's Intramural Research Program. So congratulations to all of them. And similarly, an impressive number of geneticists and genomicists as well as good friends of NHGRIs were recently elected to be fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science or AAAS with their names listed here. And congratulations to these colleagues as well as those who were elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Now, two genomics companies recently received small business awards. Illumina was named to the Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR Hall of Fame. And 23andMe received the Tibbets Award. Let me tell you about each. The SBIR Hall of Fame recognizes companies and individuals with a long period of extraordinary success in research, innovation and commercialization within the SBIR program. And then the Tibbets Award is named after Roland Tibbets who was instrumental in developing the SBIR program. These awards are presented to those who are beacons of promise and models of excellence in high technology. And then other honors moving to year-end accolades in this case. Nanopore DNA sequencing was one of nine runners up for science's breakthrough of the year. Oxford Nanopore Technologies began marketing the first Nanopore DNA sequencing device last year. And science noted that, quote, the device uses a breakthrough technology called Nanopore Sequencing to read the letters of DNA directly, end of quote. The article noted that the low startup cost of the technology and the already demonstrated novel applications, including identifying Ebola and other viruses in a few hours, sequencing the gut microbiome and the genome of a fungal pest of maize and soil microbiome sequencing on the International Space Station are all notable and worthy of this runner up designation. And then similarly, when the scientists came out with its top 10 innovations of 2016, genomic technology once again populated the list, three genomic innovations were included as listed here. And each of these three innovations have found some aspect of genome sequencing or genome editing. And then in terms of genomes in the news, there have been a number of recently generated genome sequences reported since the last council meeting. The list never seems to get smaller, but just to give you a flavor of what's been sequenced and reported since we last met, it included a Zika virus, beer yeast, well, actually 157 industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, ocean sunfish, the five pacer viper, the leopard, the Asian longhorn beetle, the back blow fly, an ancient corn cob, and Ginko tree, the spirit cave mummy, actually a 10,000 year old mummy from Nevada, the African wild dog, the tiger tail seahorse, British ash tree, and last but not least, the Canadian beaver. So congratulations to those organisms. Okay, moving on to the extramural research program. The NHGRI's genome sequencing program or GSP just completed its second year of its current phase of funding. The program is composed of four components that includes the centers for common disease genomics. We abbreviate CCDGs, which investigate common complex diseases. The center from Mendelian genomics, abbreviated CMGs, which investigate rare Mendelian diseases. Also the analysis centers, which take advantage of the data produced from these sequence production centers to perform data analysis. And finally the GSP coordinating center, which provides scientific and logistical support for the whole program. Well, the GSP is also supported by several collaborations with other NIH institutes. These include efforts with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for the Trans-OMIX for Precision Medicine Program or TOTMED within the CCDG program. You recall, Gary Gibbons came and told us about that at the last council meeting. But also that institute also provides support for CMGs and analysis centers. And then with the National Institute on Aging for the Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Program within the CCDGs. And also with the National Eye Institute within the centers from Mendelian genomics. Now these collaborations deal with common challenges, ranging from disease related genomic variant discovery to data harmonization for use across studies. An example of these collaborations was evident at a recent meeting hosted by the analysis centers and TOTMED to discuss analysis plans. It's worth noting that representatives from NHGRI's ENCODE program were also present at this meeting to discuss potential collaborations. Now, in terms of progress, each genome sequencing program component has made significant strides towards its scientific goals. The Centers for Common Disease Genomics are currently studying multiple diseases from three broad areas. Cardiovascular disease, specifically early onset coronary artery disease, hemorrhagic stroke, and atrial fibrillation. Neuropsychiatric diseases, specifically autism and epilepsy. And autoimmune inflammatory diseases, specifically asthma type one diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. Since 2016, this program has sequenced around 18,000 whole genomes and about 19,000 whole exomes for these projects. Since 2011, the Centers for Mendelian Genomics have published around 200 articles detailing the approximately 1,000 genes discovered to contribute to Mendelian diseases. These findings are based on generating and analyzing roughly 19,000 whole exomes. Now, in previous years, the Cancer Genome Atlas or TCGA was a major focus of our genome sequencing program. TCGA is a coordinated effort to better understand the molecular basis of cancer. Data production on over 10,000 tumor normal pairs have been completed and TCGA is focused on final manuscript writing. And of course, this has been a joint effort between our Institute and the National Cancer Institute. Now, for each of the over 30 cancer types, the TCGA network has published a comprehensive integrated account of sequence mutation analysis, copy number variation, gene and micro RNA expression and promoter methylation. The most recent TCGA publications which were focused on esophageal carcinoma and cervical cancer were published in nature in January. The TCGA network is now coordinating a capstone project called the Pancan Atlas. This project aims to answer big overarching questions about cancer by examining the full set of over 10,000 tumors characterized by TCGA. To facilitate the Pancan Atlas, TCGA investigators perform standardized somatic mutation calling of the entire dataset comprised an ensemble of six different mutation calling algorithms. And an open access version of these somatic genomic variant calls was made publicly available last December for investigators to examine. Moving on, our technology development program continues to move forward and has several funding opportunities that deserve highlighting. There are active requests for applications for novel nucleic acid sequencing technology development that involve both DNA and direct RNA sequencing. The second set of applications for this RFA have been reviewed and will be discussed during this council meeting. There's also an upcoming application due date in mid June of this year. Meanwhile, program announcement for novel genomic technology development yielded the first round of applications and initial awards were made this past fall. The second round of applications were received in October and these will be reviewed in the coming months and then discussed at the May council meeting. And the next application due date for this is in October of this year. The goal of the Encyclopedia for DNA Elements or ENCODE project is to create catalogs of all functional elements in the human and mouse genomes and make those catalogs available as a resource to the biomedical research community. The ENCODE project regularly organizes outreach activities to help a broad range of scientists use ENCODE resources. Additionally, ENCODE is interested in engaging the community to spark developments of new or improved scientific approaches to enhance the use and utility of ENCODE data. And as an example of this, the ENCODE dream challenge funded in part by NHGRI establish an open competition where leading computational biologists vie to create models capable of accurately predicting transcription factor binding sites across the genome. More than 30 international teams participated and the winning teams presented their results publicly in November and a comparison of the methods developed will be published in the near future. As a result of outreach and collaboration ENCODE data continue to be heavily used, there are more than 1700 community publications that's reflected by that red line from groups without ENCODE funding but who use ENCODE data for their published work. And then ENCODE consortium members have produced more than 550 publications to date and that's reflected by the blue line here. Now just last week, NHGRI announced that ENCODE is entering its fourth phase. Awards have been made to eight mapping centers, five functional characterization centers, six computational centers, a data analysis center and a data coordination center. ENCODE will continue to expand the catalog of candidate functional elements in the human and mouse genomes through high throughput data generation pipelines using a diversity of genome wide assays. New to this phase of ENCODE is the introduction of functional characterization centers which will develop and apply generalizable approaches to characterize the role of candidate functional elements identified by ENCODE in specific biological contexts. Moving on, NHGRI centers for excellence in genomic science or SEGs or multi-investigator interdisciplinary projects to develop innovative genomic approaches to achieve a very substantial advance that addresses a critical issue in genomic science or genomic medicine. Two new SEGs awards were made last year. The SEGs at the Broad Institute led by council member Aviv Ragev was renewed for a second and final five years. The goal of this SEGs is to develop and apply massively parallel analysis to understand cellular circuits by using iterative cycles of measuring many outputs, developing computational models and testing those models by perturbing circuit components. This renewal will advance the work from single cells to groups of interacting cells. And then meanwhile, the new SEGs at the University of Chicago, led by Juan He, is focused on abundant RNA modifications. This group will develop new methods for high throughput sequencing of RNA modifications at single base resolution and suitable for low sample input with the development of accompanying bioinformatics tools for data analysis. New SEGs applications were received last May, reviewed in November, and will be considered later in this council meeting. The SEGs program announcement was reissued last September, and finally last year SEGs grantee meetings, the picture on the bottom, was held in Stanford and hosted by Dr. Howard Chang. The NHL, the NHGRI EBI GWAS catalog is a curated, downloadable and user-friendly resource that catalogs the findings from published genome-wide association studies or GWAS. It is produced as a collaborative effort involving NHGRI, the European Bioinformatics Institute, EBI, and the NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information. Now last October, nature featured a commentary highlighting the bias of recent GWAS publications towards European participants. In 2009, 96% of participants in GWAS publications featured in the catalog were estimated to come from European ancestry populations. In 2016, this percentage decreased to 81%, but overall is still heavily biased towards European ancestry groups. The authors urged the scientific community to recognize the impact of this bias on genomics and precision medicine studies and to push for fundamental changes, such as incentivizing creation of ancestrally diverse cohorts and improving training opportunities in infrastructure that serve diverse populations. A complementary and comprehensive analysis of updated ancestry data is now underway by the GWAS catalog team to examine this situation further. The Phoenix project, which is charged with producing an online resource of standard measures for capturing data on common diseases, phenotypic traits, and environmental exposures, continues to add more features and expand its user space. 90 new and updated measures have been added to the Phoenix toolkit since last year, bringing the total number of standard measures to over 500. These new measures address areas such as early psychosis pregnancy and tobacco regulatory research. Now, the graph on the bottom left shows that by the end of 2016, there are 182 NIH funding opportunity announcements that encourage the use of Phoenix measures, highlighting the adoption of Phoenix across the NIH. Furthermore, many NIH-funded research programs have already integrated or soon will integrate Phoenix measures into their study design. Examples of this include population assessment of tobacco and health study, the adolescent brain cognitive development project, environmental influences on child health outcome study, and the all-of-us component of the Precision Medicine Initiative. Lastly, through a collaboration with NCBI, all 15,000 Phoenix variables have been mapped to hundreds of DB gap studies, greatly facilitating data harmonization. For example, the mapping project identified nine DB gap studies that use an alcohol 30-day frequency variable, five of which are shown here in this table. The ClinGen resource or clinical genome resource defines and disseminates the clinical relevance of genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research. There are several new ClinGen collaborations and tools that are worth mentioning. In October, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development issued a funding opportunity to establish expert your curation panels for diseases of high priority to their institute. These expert panels will use ClinGen's curation tools will be integrated into ClinGen's curation ecosystem. Applications were due in January and will be reviewed later this spring. ClinGen's informatics team led by Mike Cherry at Stafford and Alex Milanovich of Baylor have released production versions of their gene variant and actionability curation interfaces that guide curators through all aspects of curation from reviewing publications to calculating final scores. And demo versions of these are available on the ClinGen website. And lastly, broad data sharing is a priority for ClinGen. And so ClinGen's education working group developed a one page plain language consent form with supplemental online material to facilitate data sharing in its clinical setting. The consent form and a short videos are available at the ClinGen website. Spanish, French and Chinese translations of the form and video will be available soon. Recent publications highlight the additional important work coming out of ClinGen. ClinGen research has worked to integrate ClinGen resources into electronic health records through the health level seven info button standard. The somatic cancer working group developed a consensus set of minimal genomic variant level data for sharing and curating somatic genomic variant data and is working toward integrating this data standard into ClinVar. And finally, ClinGen has developed a good working relationship with the Food and Drug Administration. And the genetics and medicine commentary ClinGen investigators share their perspective on the importance of engaging with regulatory stakeholders to facilitate the transition of genomics from bench to bedside. Moving on to another genomic medicine program the clinical exploratory research or CSER program focuses on the integration of genome sequencing into the clinical workflow, including the generation, interpretation and clinical reporting of genomic information. CSER has now enrolled over 5,000 adults and over 1,300 children. For over 5,000 of these individuals, germline genome sequence data will be generated and for 1,000 tumor genome sequence data will be generated. As one measure of overall impact, CSER has generated 288 publications including 18 cross CSER working group publications. CSER was prominently featured at both the National Society of Genetic Counselors annual education conference in September and the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in October. In total, there were 45 CSER related posters and presentations at these two meetings including talks on healthcare outcomes and costs after genome sequencing, genomic services in community health centers and enhancing diversity in genomic medicine research. Now one recent CSER highlight is an actionability return of results working group paper published in genetics and medicine which summarizes the genome sequencing and reporting practices of 21 clinical labs around the country, including nine CSER labs. Among those 21 labs, orthogonal confirmation using Sanger-based DNA sequencing or other methods was used by 81% of the labs for all reported genomic variants and for variants or for variants considered to represent possible diagnostic findings. 14% of laboratories confirmed other sequence variants and 5% of laboratories did not confirm any variants. Additionally, among those 21 labs, 95% returned findings in the ACMG-56 genes, there was variation in the return of secondary findings such that 10% of labs routinely returned variants for complex traits and 57% returned variants related to monogenic diseases of adult onset. 67% of labs allow patient opt out for receiving secondary findings. Overall, this paper highlighted areas of consensus that are indicative of developing standards in the community, areas with notable divergence and a need of future discussion to include the use of phenotypic data to inform case analysis, the interpretation of reporting of case-specific quality metrics and methods, and the process for initiating reanalysis of sequence data. The implementing genomics in practice or IGNITE network works to enhance the use of genomic medicine by supporting the development of methods for incorporating genomic information into clinical care. To date, IGNITE research has resulted in more than 85 publications. One exciting outcome of IGNITE research could drastically reduce adverse events for patients taking anti-clotting medication. So IGNITE collected data from seven institutions on approximately 1,800 patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and CYP2C19 clinical genotyping. Results showed a higher than two-fold rate of major adverse cardiovascular events, that's the Y-axis on the graph, and patients carrying the CYP2C19 loss of function allele who were prescribed clopidogrel compared to those with loss of functional allele on an alternative anti-platelet therapy. Switching medication from clopidogrel reduced the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events by more than half. These results were presented at the late-breaking trials session of the American Heart Association meeting in November, and in many ways the strength of the study lies in the collaborative efforts of the participating sites. The newborn sequencing and genomic medicine in public health, otherwise known as our N-site program, explores in a limited but deliberative manner the implications, challenges, and opportunities associated with the possible use of genomic sequence information in the care of newborns. Recently, the four sites published a marker paper describing the consortium in the journal Pediatrics. This article examines some of the challenges of newborn genome sequencing in three distinct clinical settings, diagnostics, preventative and predictive, describes the four projects that we're funding and puts the N-site consortium's research in the context of current and future strategies for newborn screening and genome sequencing of newborns in the clinic. The ethical, legal, and social implications or our LC research program supports research on the implementation of genomics for individuals, families, and communities. The LC research program is cosponsoring the 4th LC Congress to be held in June at the Jackson Laboratory in Farmington, Connecticut. There will be a major conference addressing a wide range of LC issues, the first such meaning to be held since the 2011 Congress hosted by the University of North Carolina. Keynote speakers include Eric Dishman, Alondra Nelson, Wiley Burke, James Evans, and Perlo Rourke. Their talks will cover a variety of LC topics in both genome science and genomic medicine. The Congress has also received over 190 abstracts for paper, poster, and panel presentations, including a number of international submissions. The final program will be released later this spring. The NHGRI computational genomics and data science program held a workshop in Bethesda at the end of September. It was co-chaired by Mike Banky, Carol Bolt, Dre Idecker, Aviva Gev, and Lincoln Stein, about 40 extramural scientists from academia and industry, as well as colleagues from NHGRI, the Big Data to Knowledge program, and the National Cancer Institute attended. The goal was to elicit discussion about NHGRI's future extramural computational genomics and data science portfolio. The workshop presentations and discussion were designed to gain commentary input on priority areas and feedback on the priority areas were interactively collected using a multi-voting method, as shown on this screenshot. And I'll tell you that a report and proposed actions is currently being developed and will be presented at the May Council meeting. And finally, NHGRI provides about $12.4 million in small business grants annually. Our current small business innovation, or SBIR, and small business technology transfer, STTR portfolio, includes 24 phase one proof of principle and 14 phase two pre-commercialization awards. New phase two awards are supporting work next generation DNA sequencing sample and library preparation innovations at Somagenics, a single cell transcriptional analysis at BioSpider Technologies, improved genotype imputation of diverse populations at 23andMe, and developing genome-wide CRISPR library screening platforms at Celica. These small business grants are drawn from an increasingly stronger application pool. Moving on now to NIH Common Fund and trans-NIH efforts, starting with Common Fund, the Genotype Tissue Expression Project, or GTEX, aims to create a public access of human gene expression and its regulation across multiple tissue types and to aid in the functional interpretation of genetic associations with disease. In late 2015, GTEX reached its target enrollment of 965 donors. In October of 2015, version six of the GTEX data was released through DBGAP. In this version, there were 351 hold exome sequences and 160 whole genome sequences which were generated from whole blood DNA. Version seven of the data is anticipated this coming summer and this will include over 600 donors with whole genome sequences and RNA-seq data on more than 12,000 tissue samples and GTEX data production is still ongoing. Now, GTEX data can be found in DBGAP where it is the second most downloaded dataset after TCGA. And in April, GTEX will hold an open European Community Meeting at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain to engage European researchers and meanwhile plans are proceeding for a final GTEX community meeting and steering committee meeting to be held in late June or early July in the D.C. area. Currently, the GTEX portal is the primary place where users access GTEX data. GTEX portal usage is tracked by user registrations and by IP addresses. I can tell you that as of October of 2016, the portal had over 9,000 registered users an increase of 67% compared to 2015. The GTEX portal has been accessed from just over 48,000 unique IP addresses from over 90 countries. As of December of 2016, over 48,000 gene expression profiles have been downloaded from the GTEX portal. And over the last three years, more than 220 papers have been published using GTEX data, most from non-consortia members as shown in the purple and blue regions of the bar graph on the right. The GTEX portal is now referenced by other significant data resources. UCSC Genome Browser and Ensembl teams have integrated GTEX data within their genome browsers and gene cards and the human protein atlas have also integrated GTEX data directly. H3Africa's central goal is to develop a sustainable and collaborative African genetics and genomics research enterprise. This past October, H3Africa had the honor of receiving the president of Mauritius to speak at the opening of the ninth H3Africa consortium meeting. The president shown on the photograph on the left emphasized the importance of making the public aware of the remarkable research being carried out on the continent of Africa, reiterating her long-standing belief that the African governments need to increase their support of research. This message was both heartening and topical as the consortium continues to work on its plans for sustainability as it completes its first phase and enters its second and final phase of support from the NIH Common Fund. This coming May, H3Africa will host the final consortium meeting of its first phase in Botswana, presenting their progress from the first five years and charting a course for its next phase. And speaking of its next phase, applications for phase two of the H3Africa program have been received and will be reviewed in March before coming to the May Council meeting. Another Common Fund project, the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, or UDN, aims to improve the level of diagnosis and care for patients with undiagnosed diseases, facilitate research into the etiology of these diseases, and create an integrated and collaborative research community to identify and share improved options for optimal patient management. To date, the UDN has received over 1,000 applications and accepted over 400 patients for evaluation at the seven UDN clinical sites across the nation. To apply, one needs to access the UDN gateway by clicking on the Apply button, which appears on all the UDN webpages. In November, the UDN received approval for a second phase of Common Fund support, which will run through fiscal year, from fiscal year 2018 through 2022. Pending the availability of funds, the program expects to publish funding opportunity announcements this summer for this second phase. Components are expected to include a coordinating center, eight to 10 clinical sites, and three to six core laboratories. As I've mentioned at previous director's reports, NIH has been heavily involved implementing the US Precision Medicine Initiative, or PMI. NIH's funding for fiscal year 2016 included $70 million for the National Cancer Institute to lead efforts in cancer genomics as part of PMI for oncology, as well as $130 million to build a national large-scale longitudinal research cohort of one million or more volunteers. The latter activity, which was formerly was referred to as the PMI cohort program, has now been rebranded as the All of Us Research Program. All of Us aims to engage a million or more Americans as active participants in a research program designed to improve disease prevention, treatment, and health outcomes through a data-driven approach to precision medicine. A nationwide survey published by a team of NIH researchers, including NHRI's own David Kaufman, showed broad support for the Precision Medicine Initiative, indicating that the majority of Americans are interested in a cohort study along the lines of the All of Us Research Program. At the September Council meeting, I outlined the funded components of the All of Us Research Program, including recruitment at federally qualified health centers, a regional medical centers, and a veteran's administration hospitals, a biobank, a data and research support center, and a participant technology center. In October, the program announced four new regional medical centers, including the New England Precision Medicine Consortium, the Geisinger Health System, the Trans-American Consortium for Healthcare Systems Research Network, and the California Precision Medicine Consortium. The All of Us program team is actively working to develop the infrastructure needed to launch participant recruitment. As Director Eric Dishman told you at the September Council meeting, the program will launch, run, ready, and write. As part of the preparation for that launch, the program is holding several meetings. For example, there was a research program stakeholder briefing this past October. In addition, the program will be holding a meeting on returner results, including genetic and genomic results in March. The NIH All of Us program page will be updated over the next few weeks with more information about this meeting. And moving on to another division at NHGRI, our Division of Policy, Communications, and Education. That division partners with the American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG, to sponsor two training fellowships that are probably familiar to many of you, the well-established Genetics and Public Policy Fellowship, and the recently launched Genetics and Education Fellowship. To date, these programs have sponsored 16 Genetics and Public Policy Fellows and three Genetics and Education Fellows. We're currently accepting applications for the 2017-2018 fellowship year, which runs from September 2017 until December 2018. During the fellowship, the fellows complete a series of rotations with NHGRI and ASHG, as well as external rotations on Capitol Hill or in educational organizations. Applications are due on April 24th, 2017, so please share this information with your departments and institutions, as well as any individuals you know who might be interested in these fellowship opportunities. The Genome Unlocking Lights Code exhibition continues to make stops across North America. The exhibition closed at Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas at the beginning of the year and will open on April 1st at the Peoria Riverfront Museum in Peoria, Illinois. A later this year, it will next travel to the Health Museum in Houston, Texas, followed by a stop in Canada at Science North. And as you may recall, the Genome Unlocking Lights Code exhibition is associated with a website to extend the experience of visiting the exhibition to bring its content to students and teachers outside the city's visits. One of the most popular interactives on this website, In and Beyond Africa, received a highly prestigious and recognized education honor, the Teachers' Choice Award for the Classroom 2017, awarded by Learning Magazine. A panel of teachers evaluated In and Beyond Africa based on quality, instructional value, ease of use, and innovation. And it was one of 30 winners and was profiled in the January 2017 issue of Learning Magazine. You're all familiar with In and Beyond Africa, help students explore how homo sapiens evolved in East Africa and across the globe. Learners discover the migration patterns that influence genomic diversity, test toolmaking skills, learn about some of the genes responsible for skin color variation, and engage in related game style activities. Now NHGRI has had multiple conversation over the past year with colleagues in academia and industry and nonprofit community, even the government, about the need for increased awareness about genomic concepts and genomic medicine applications. The strong consensus is that overall genomic literacy of the general public and the healthcare professions is profoundly lagging behind the pace in which genomic advances are entering or will enter day-to-day life. And that NHGRI is uniquely suited to take a leadership role in pursuing efforts to address this growing program. So as a result of these conversations, NHGRI is exploring the possibility of launching a highly collaborative national campaign to enhance genomic literacy. For now, we are calling this effort the Genomic Literacy Education and Engagement, or GLI, initiative. At present, GLI is envisioned as an effort to coordinate and augment ongoing genomics education and outreach efforts, as well as to address important opportunities or gaps in educational needs. Currently, we are anticipating that GLI would support the enhancement of genomic literacy efforts within three major target groups, K through 16 students, the general public, and healthcare professionals. To assess the opportunities and potential goals for such an initiative, NHGRI is hosting a GLI Strategic Visioning Meeting in March on the NIH campus. And we plan to update you about this meeting at the May Council meeting. So stay tuned. Later this month, the Education and Community Involvement Branch will begin accepting applications for its 2017 NHGRI Short Course in Genomics. This short course is for K through 12 Community College and Tribal College faculty members teaching genetics, biology, or related science courses. This year's course will be held on the NIH campus starting at the end of July. Selected educators will come to NIH for three days to hear lectures and receive teaching resources from leading NHGRI and NIH researchers, clinicians, and staff to discuss ways to incorporate genomic content into their classrooms and to participate in various tours of NIH facilities. Topics discussed during the course range from undiagnosed and rare diseases, bioinformatics, CRISPR, cancer genomics, ethical issues in genomics research, and health disparities among others. Now in March, the Genomic Healthcare Branch will begin accepting applications for its 2017 short course. This short course is for practicing nurses and physicians assistants as well as for the education of these practitioners. This course will also be held on the NIH campus starting in early August. During the first two days, participants will listen to lectures on genomics across healthcare curriculum and the challenges of implementing and educating professionals about genomics, pharmacogenomics, genetic counseling, and case studies. The last two days will focus on implementation, highlighting resources and successful academic and clinical strategies. And lastly, the Surgeon General's My Family Health Portrait, which is an NHGRI-based effort, provides a web-based tool that the public can use to record family health history and share it with family or provide it to their healthcare provider. To make the website housing the tool easier to use, the Genomic Healthcare Branch work with NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology to improve the user experience. This nine month project culminated in the release of version 3.4 just before the National Family History Day on Thanksgiving. Work is continuing to update the foreign language translations for the revised website. And then in January, the My Family Health Portrait was included in a hackathon hosted by the National Library of Medicine. It was the first time a health information technology related project was included in such a hackathon. A diverse team of seven programmers unfamiliar with family history tools developed plans and drafted code to extend the interoperability and decision support functions of this public tool. The goal of the hackathon was to expand the use of the tool, which is an open source tool, and to teach programmers and others about family history and available family history resources. Finally, let me just say a few things about the Institute's Intramural Research Program. Start with something that Max Munker and his colleagues in the Medical Genetics Branch of our Intramural Program did, in particular holding the first International Summit in Human Genetics and Genomics, which occurred this past September. This was the first such summit, which is part of a five-year initiative that will involve annual month-long workshops. The summit is designed to help developing countries build and expand their expertise, infrastructure systems and technologies in genetics and genomics. The goal is to help them understand the prevalence and basis of genetic diseases in their nations and help them address the associated public health challenges. The summit was sponsored by NHGRI in addition to a collection of other NIH institutes and centers, the foundation for the NIH and additional profit and nonprofit partners. The first summit in September had a month-long curriculum that included courses and tailored training for each participant. The program is intended to train healthcare professionals and trainees from developing countries that are in their early to mid-career stage. A total of 19 participants came to this first summit from 13 countries across the globe, including Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Peru, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Turkey. Participants experienced over 50 lectures, field trips to the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center and various other sites, a bioinformatics workshop and a patient panel. And applications for the next summit will be accepted starting in April of this year. In terms of a couple honors, starting with Dan Castor, who's our Scientific Director, Director of Intramural Research Program, Dan received recognition as a master of the American College of Rheumatology. This is one of the highest honors that the college bestows. The designation of master is conferred to American College of Rheumatology members who have made outstanding contributions to the college and to the field of rheumatology through scholarly achievement and or service to their patients, students and profession. So congratulations to Dan. And then Alec Wilson, a senior investigator and a co-branch chief in our Intramural Program has been awarded the International Genetic Epidemiology Society Leadership Award. This award is given to a scientist that has made significant contributions to the field of genetic epidemiology through teaching, research and service. So congratulations to Alec. NHGRI Intramural Investigators have once again been quite productive since the last council meeting. Ivona Asinkovich and colleagues discovered a rare and sometimes lethal inflammatory disease, Atulia penia, that primarily affects young children. They also identified anti-inflammatory treatments that ease some of the patient's symptoms, including fever, skin rashes, diarrhea, joint pain and overall failure to thrive. Chuck Venditti and his colleagues demonstrated in mice that gene therapy may be the best method for correcting the single faulty gene that causes nemenpic disease type C1, a rare and fatal disorder of the central nervous system. And Sean Burgess and his colleagues identified a novel role for a gene known as heat shock protein 60 or HSP60. They found that the protein is critical in tissue regeneration and wound healing and that topical treatment of a gel containing HSP60 dramatically accelerates wound closure in a diabetic mouse model. And I get near the end, but before I end, I was always wanting to put in a plug to say anyone wishing to receive my monthly email called the genomics landscape can simply go to list.nih.gov and then search for NHGRI landscape and sign up to receive it. And finally a thanks to all of my colleagues at the Institute, 50 or 60 of them probably that contributed to the slides to help put all this together and allowed director's report to flow in and also that includes the communications group involved in helping to create the electronic resource. All of this is under the tight coordination and encouragement of the ringleader, Chris Watterstrand, shown here at some exotic marine location and joined her favorite pastime scuba diving. So with that, I will end and happy to take any questions, thank you. Questions for Eric? Okay, lovely summary, thank you Eric. So we're gonna continue with the open session agenda and next up we're gonna welcome back Vivian Bonazzi. Vivian was a program director at NHGRI in the area of bioinformatics and computational biology for a number of years. And about three years ago, she moved over to the office of the associate director for data science. And she has wears several hats over there, but she's come to us today to give a presentation and an update on the NIH data commons. We thought that would be appropriate for the council to hear, but also a very nice background for the concept clearance that will be presented later today. Have your, okay, Vivian, all yours.