 We're very excited to have all of you here. It's fun to see both so many people I know from past times in my life and so many people I don't know but hope to. So welcome everybody. For those of you who don't know, I'm Jennifer Troyer and I'm a program director at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Oh, while we're here this will flash throughout the day but in case anybody has not yet gotten connected this is how you get connected. And that's important because we have a lot of things online and we're going to try and be as paperless as possible here. So this workshop is being held in part as part of NHGRI's strategic planning process our hashtag is genome 2020. And so we're looking to have a strategic plan published in 2020 and as part of that one of our goals is to collaborate more with other agencies and so part of this meeting is also part of NIFA from USDA's planning and NSF and we have several goals here but what we really hope is that all of you will be thinking forward and thinking about what should be done in the future, what you can advise our three agencies in terms of how in this new age of many types of data that's sort of democratizing across all species we can compare across species to learn more. And so there are several goals but we hope that we'll keep the picture broad and not delve down into problems of very specific organisms as much as your specific organisms are wonderful and interesting but what are the things that are going to drive the field forward for all organisms? We're specifically looking for areas of synergy and areas where we could be collaborating but aren't not just the agencies but the communities. And then areas that will come forward in the future that we should be paying attention to that you might be aware of and we might not be thinking about yet. And then finally there's actually only one time in this entire meeting that we ask you to focus a little bit on human health and that is in our strategic planning session tomorrow I think it starts at 2.15 to ask sort of as part of the national institutes of health what should NHGRI specifically be doing but the rest of the time we're talking about generally and the field. So there are some logistics. You have the long form link to the meeting materials in your inboxes all of you hopefully from me but under meeting materials but there's also a tiny URL comp gen drive where you can access it. And so for those of you watching from other parts of the world you can remember that it's also being live streamed at Genome TV live and there are also two ways actually that anybody in the room or in the broader audience can give us your thoughts your ideas your suggestions of ways to move forward. One is that there is a spreadsheet in this folder in this Google Drive that is specifically for putting in your ideas and we will be looking at all of that and you can access it and enter any time. And then another is and it's at the bottom here is that you can send an email to Genomics2020atnih.gov and we have someone that will be checking that and translating your ideas and asking your questions. Chris Wetterstrand. Chris do you want to wave? There are a couple things about food that I want to say I'm sorry we can't feed you first of all but we can't so we're trying to make food as accessible as possible. So there are box lunches available but you need to order them. You should have a form that you should have been given a form when you registered to order. Registration is just out the front there if you have not yet registered. There's also a market if you go out here you go to the left and up the stairs there's a little market and if you walk a little further there's a hotel restaurant. But also if you walk in that direction across the street there are lots of there are lots of restaurants and it's very easy to get over there and back in an hour if you'd rather eat outside. Sandy Max at registration will answer any questions that you have if you need help with anything please go to Sandy. Check out on Friday you can check out and bring your luggage we'll be able to store it so don't worry about that bring it down here we'll be able to keep it safe until Friday is over. Okay so I would really like to think this has been a wonderful group of people to work with they've been enthusiastic they're why you're all here are external advisors so if you all can stand up if you're in the room we have Charles Danko, Claire Gill, Eric Jarvis, Eleanor Carlson, Claudia Mello, Pam Soltis, and Huai Zhenzou. So yes round of applause for our external committee. And then we also wouldn't be here without our internal committee I will not make you all stand up but the partners from all the agencies who have worked on really fostering this idea and making it happen, Sean Burgess, Eric Lyons, Lakshmi Mthakumali, Ted Morgan, Alayna Odd Strander, Lourgetta Schools, Heidi Sophia, Taylor Lynn Steven, me and Chris Wetterstrand. And I particularly want to give a shout out to Lourgetta Schools, Can You Wave, who has made everything happen and brought this all together, and then Taylor Lynn Steven who you've all gotten lots of emails and communications from and none of these materials would be here or in the shape they are in and we would not be running as smoothly as we have been without her. So finally we have a great communications team here who are making sure that everybody in the world is seeing what you say and hearing it clearly. So thank you all. And finally strategic results has been our contractor who's helped with the hotel logistics food, etc. So all right now I'm going to turn things over to Adele Tarzello who is our representative from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. She is the director of animal systems there.