 So, all right, thanks, thanks a lot. So, David, you're there on the phone, right? Yep. Okay, so I'll start off and we'll have David weigh in on this as well. So, we had the panel and it's, as Eric said, a mandated advisory process that occurs only every decade. There are the people listed. I will say that this might go down in history as the only NIH committee that had two people from Alabama on it, but I don't know. And then we ended up meeting and having a formal written report, which I think I encourage council members to look at it. It's in the ECB now. So, the process just briefly, we met four times, twice in person, twice on the phone, and then there were individual meetings as well over starting, I think it was last December is when we started. I can't remember the exact date. We got a bunch of background materials, both at the beginning and throughout. We met with Dan and the director, obviously with Eric as well, and the section heads, and toured some of the facilities. And so, just one comment about the process. This was really, really well run. We felt that it was like we had everything we needed. We had great staff. Ellen, Susan, and Allison really did an enormous amount for that, that actually made the job of the committee a lot easier than it would have been. So, just to go through a sort of assessment of what the committee felt, we felt that having Dan into this position has been a wonderful thing for the program. We felt that he'd done a great job only for a couple years now, or even less when we were reviewing, and a lot of progress had been made. And also, just a comment that Dan has been very responsive, we think, is the DSC, is that the name of the committee? BSC, the Scientific Advisory Group, which included Bruce Korf, who's also on this blue ribbon panel, as well as to the blue ribbon panel. We felt like the, it was very impressive to look at the faculty, the productivity of the faculty in terms of looking at papers, not just counting but the quality of the papers, the types of things, and the research programs. And we felt, I mean, not uniform, everybody equal stars, but there were some really very strong things, and overall we were very impressed with that. One thing that I think impressed all of us, certainly impressed me was the teaching and training program. This is mostly training the next generation, not so much coursework, although there is some, I think Bill Pavan is leading a lot of that, and we met with the students and postdocs as well, and I feel like this is a top-notch training program in that sense. We also were very complimentary about, really this is NHGRI in general, but the intramural program as well as the extramural program, but this broader role in sort of being glue that brings lots of people in from all over NIH to both learn genome science to participate in it, it does leverage, I was impressed with that number that you gave this morning, Eric, it does leverage a lot of other resources in addition to the 500 million that NHGRI gets, both counting their overall budget. And another impressive thing is the way that the cores and the centers work together. This infrastructure, of course it's been built over many years, but it operates well from what we can tell, and it certainly serves more than just the intramural program here at NHGRI. In addition to the sort of basic research programs that the faculty do, there are a number of unique programs that we thought were quite good, you've heard about these, in fact you know about them, this is listing some of them, the Chemical Genomic Center and the UDP as well. And then also the sort of working with these great advances that are happening, especially in DNA sequencing, but other genomic methods and being involved in adapting those or adopting those quickly and using them because you can use them on a large scale in the IDP that's been important, as well as analysis tools and including developing some of those. So I'm sort of mixing recommendations and with sort of assessment, but if you just sort of think about what the committee felt is that it is good that you have set lofty goals, you have an opportunity to do that, partly our field, partly the youth of the Genome Institute compared to much of the rest of NIH. And the Blue Ribbon panel felt that that was important to continue doing that. We felt that it's really important to maintain a strong basic science component that actually has been a strength of the intramural program and to a person, the panel, and I think the BSC felt this as well, to make sure that you don't lose that or let that decay because it's crucial to have that for being able to apply these to clinical problems. And one of the recurring themes was more bioinformatics. You know that. We all know it. It's true for extramural. It's a broken record, but we really do need to do that as much as we can. And actually, while there weren't specific recommendations of exactly what to do, that if you, when you're thinking about new, developing new programs to try to emphasize that more because it's just going to be needed more and more and more, it's a little bit of a trite statement to say that we're spending, we need to spend more effort on analyzing the generating, but that's what most of us say nowadays because that's because the generating data. And actually, bioinformatics is not really the right word. It's the combination of biology, analysis, statistics, computation, et cetera of it. So continuing those, so Dan just addressed these in his last, this point and a couple of these in his last slides, but you are going to have, you already are, and you're going to have even tougher decisions regardless of what happens with budgets. It's not likely that it'll look like it did in 1994 or during times of really strong budgets. And even if you didn't have that issue, it's important to have the process that works really well. And this is hard for all of us, right? This is not a trivial thing, is how do you take an infrastructure and have flexibility when you have faculty and you have people in their careers where you can strengthen the strong ones and bring in new ones as well. I should have put that in, and then at the expense of the weaker ones. And that's a thing with tough decisions being made. And I think you're addressing, it sounds like you're addressing this, I think the BSC suggested this as well, that you're addressing this directly. And I think it's important that you have your advisors at least, and maybe counsel too, to see that kind of on an ongoing basis, because this is rapidly changing. David, actually can you comment on this re-evaluate branch organization? I think you might have more to say about that than I, maybe you don't know what I meant when I wrote that. Yes, I think we were there encouraging, we made a couple of specific recommendations, which I think Dan was very receptive to see the branch structures as being set in style, functions of the branch chief, orally been more by orally. Perfect. That's what I thought. You don't want to fall into the trap that a lot of medical schools, or maybe other universities as well fall into where you're just doing it that way because that's the way it's always been done. And again, in this field it's even more so. So the two biggest issues, or at least things to pay attention to, and these are recommendations to help strengthen the program, not to criticize. It was quite a bit of talk about this dichotomy of, are the differences between the extramural and the intramural programs not whining, but just discussions about how bottom up the, in general, how bottom up the intramural program is and how top down the extramural program is. And Eric, somebody just talked about that a few minutes ago, and it was, I don't think it was Dan, but the idea that a lot of the extramural, maybe you did, a lot of the extramural programs are ones where you needed that kind of infrastructure. We would never have sequenced the human genome without a lot of top down organization and many of the other current projects. And I think this balance is just something that I can assure you that people on the outside world talk about all the time. They see it, those who are aware of it and know it. And it doesn't mean that intramural needs to change dramatically, but it might be, it might be, I think the recommendation was to at least think about how that dichotomy, and you'll see why in a minute, why I'm, the panel talked about this much quite a bit, as well as this issue that Dan brought up just a while ago about the fact that this institute has probably twice as much as maybe all the other institutions, I don't actually know what the distribution is, but most of them are at 10% or less of their budgets, and of course some of those are big institutes. And so the reason we're, and the panel brought this up, and I think the BSC talked about this as well, is that these two things do put some vulnerability on the NHGRI overall, not just the intramural program, and vulnerable to criticism. And you know, maybe you might think of this as just whining extramural people who didn't get their grants, but you do very much rely on that creativity. You don't want all the innovation or all the R01 type or those kinds of projects to come only intramural. You want them to be, you know, to take advantage of those potentially many hundreds if not thousands of people out there. So I guess I've duplicated this by mistake, meaning that increased scrutiny from the extramural investigators, maybe the broader community and possibly other NIH. And then the other thing, and maybe this, I think Dan is starting to address this, what is the rationale? Maybe this was not the right way to put it. But the committee, the panel felt that there was not a strongly articulated rationale or justification for these two issues, the dichotomy and the 20%. And I think it really goes back to the question of, you know, why 45 faculty, why this number, why that percentage, is it just maintaining history? It did start off at a time when things needed to be built. And the panel was not saying cut these. It was not recommending that, oh, you may have to cut things. And so one of the questions is how you do that. Dan posed a couple of the issues about how that could and might be done. And we did talk about how one aspect of this, how you might do this, is attrition being one possibility. We didn't really make, we're not making recommendations for that, it's just to be ready for this and deal with it and be ready to deal with the, you know, the, with budgets, extramural budgets decreasing and this budget not decreasing, you will run into more and more and the panel thought you'd run into more and more difficulties. It's not just trying to keep people happy out there, it's actually what is good for the institute, what's good for the scientific community and what's good for the world. I think that was, oh, yeah. Then David, I'm going to let you do the guiding principles. I talk too much, so. Okay. Was that my cue? Yeah, do you have the slide? So it's that, I think it's the last slide. So encourage. Oh, well, no, that's, I mean, I can't control, but I don't think I'm going to try to use the slides over the phone. Okay. There were three guiding principles. Okay, okay. Rick, did you have more you were going to present there? No, that's it. Okay. So can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. So let me just, time, but let me just reinforce some of the things that Rick has said. I really want to thank Eric Green for taking the besides very seriously and assembling a superb panel of reviewers. It was, it was an absolute delight to work with this wise experience collegial group. The program and the support staff. I'm thinking especially of Ellen for bending over backwards to live in panel being responsive to requests, making it doable. Question of what is the state of the intramural program today and what does the future hold. I concluded that the intramural program today is quite healthy. It has excellent leadership and as many strengths that set it apart from some research institutes elsewhere. There are several strengths and features that make it unique. Those are described in the report and you've heard about some of those from Dan, so I won't elaborate here. Let me then mention operational, operational considerations and a few full of soft. Operationally, I would just highlight a few small exercises and which perhaps we, in some small way, helped him think through and serve to reinforce. I'll name just three. One is a name for the faculty, which would bring in faculty member in the management of their lab's budget, accounting of costs, allocated out, accounting of costs and in the budgeting procedures. Operationally, Dan is moving toward, only support is moved toward putting real teeth into the process of the quadrennial reviews. Each of the 45 or so faculty members is subject to a zero going review every four years. It is absolutely essential that unfavorable reviews result in diminished resources for that faculty member and that good reviews result in continuation or enhancement if possible. And it's, for anybody who has run an organization, you'll understand what I mean when I say that this will be incredibly important in times of constrained budgets. Because otherwise, there will be little or no real teeth and real consequences for unfavorable reviews. So those are three operational things that we highlight. Philosophically, three things that we thought were of enormous importance. One, give them, deepen and encourage a culture of risk-taking and set lofty, lofty goals. And there must be an insistence on excellence. Today, we felt that there is a strong commitment to excellence and going forward, the importance of that commitment cannot be overstated. Again, in budget constrained times. That commitment to excellence is tested most explicitly in the context of the quadrennial reviews of each of the faculty members. Philosophically, we think it's important for the Intramural Program to continue to catalyze genomic research on the NIH campus broadly. In a broader, some length, something that Rick has already touched upon, which is what we viewed as a medium to long-term risk for the Intramural Program, that being the dichotomy between the investigator-driven, bottom-up research agenda of the Intramural Program and the very centrally-driven, top-down research agenda of the Extramural Program. And here, I would say something, I would just clarify something that's mentioned to this. In the report, we, I'll just quote it, we emphatically and unequivocally support and affirm focus on the individual creativity, productivity and excellence of its Intramural Research Program investigators and the latitude given these investigators to establish their own scientific priorities into question that the degree of freedom of the Intramural Program will come under increasing scrutiny and criticism. I wouldn't call it whining. I'd just call it the way things work in a democracy. It's going to come under increasing scrutiny and criticism from an extramural scientific community that sees a budget devoted to investigator-initiated pursuits. And especially, I would say a question that we, in a sense, put before leadership, but wasn't felt as if it was left unanswered was the articulation of a rationale or justification to account for the dichotomy. We understand that this, in some sense, it reflects historical trends at NHGRI, but I think that the rationale, I think the committee felt that the rationale needs to be articulated and new if it is to continue things that we did not address and why we did not address them. As the blue ribbon panel, we did not, NHGRI funding is being an NHGRI budget. It should be devoted to the Intramural as opposed to the Extramural program. We focused on how to maximize the value and impact of the Intramural program and the Extramural programs are in a position to determine the relative value of the two programs and to allocate funds between them. Of course, priority decisions are never made in a vacuum and so we did not actually try to take on the question of that percentage. We also did not address the scientific priorities. Here we affirmed the Intramural program's tradition of and commitment to faculty setting their own research agendas and being subject to quadrennial review. Similarly, we did not review the work of individual faculty members. That's the work of the Board of Scientific Counselors. As I mentioned before, we did thoroughly explore and discuss the quadrennial review and the consequences of favorable or unfavorable review. So I would stop there and be happy to take questions from council or elaborate upon any aspects of this. Okay. Thank you, David. Thank you, Rick. I think the floor is open for discussion for Rick or David or Dan or me. Howard. So I have a question. So related to risk of flight of the top faculty. So there's pressure on the system. There's clearly some successful scientists that's going on. And so I'm just curious if you have any inkling around and maybe this is more for Dan, that you're trying to balance top down versus bottom up. But do you know what the risk is for flight? I mean, it seems to me you've got some people in here that could be taken out of the system by others that would want to come recruiting. I can't hear. I'm not sure. Does Dan have a microphone on? Oh, yes. Now I do. So anyway, the question was whether there's a risk of flight of some of our stronger faculty members, whether they might be recruited elsewhere. And I am very aware of that possibility and worried about the possibility that in fact we could end up with a situation in which some of our stronger faculty would leave, would be recruited away, and that we could end up with perhaps individuals in the faculty who are not as strong. And that is a worry. And I think that that's something that I'm going to have to deal with on a case-by-case basis. I will tell you that amongst our tenure track investigators, we've had a couple of very strong tenure track investigators who have or will be leaving for other institutions. Both of them, at least largely for personal reasons. Elliot Margulies went to Illumina about a year ago, certainly a very strong bioinformatician. And as I mentioned in my synopsis, Yardena Samuels will be going to the Weizmann Institute in a few months. And she was up for tenure and certainly would have been considered, you know, a very strong faculty going into the future. So I do worry about that. There's no question about that. And certainly thinking about, you know, comparing the possibilities intramurally versus extramural. There are things that you can do in the intramural program that I think are very difficult to do in the extramural world. And if you're doing one of those things, then, you know, there's a very strong attraction to stay. I certainly ten or so years ago considered various extramural possibilities myself, but stayed at least largely because of the advantages offered by the clinical center, which I didn't feel one would be able to replicate very easily anywhere else. So, you know, if that's in play, then that's certainly something that can keep people around. On the other hand, because of the fact that in the intramural program, it's very difficult to supplement your budget beyond what you get through the institute. Certainly someone who's a very productive individual in the extramural world has other opportunities besides just the NIH grant system. So for those individuals, there is a major attraction, yes. Just a comment that one of the things that must be attractive is the infrastructure for the sequencing, and especially the medical part of the clinical center, the part that Dan mentioned, that essentially supplements the faculty's budgets, right? Most of that does not come out of their budget. It's part of being at NIH. I will also comment that when times get hard here, they're also hard on the outside world. Actually, let me jump in. We actually discussed this a little bit during the meetings of the Blue Ribbon Panel, and actually I think in difficult times, such as the entire academic scientific enterprise is experiencing right now, I think the advantage is actually shifting towards the intramural program because of the relative stability of funding that the intramural program investigators enjoy. And we actually, we had some, there was one point in our second face-to-face meeting where we discussed just that topic in the context between the Blue Ribbon Panel and the assembled faculty to say there was general agreement on that point. I would point out Dan mentioned the two recent departures of tenure-track investigators, but in some ways it's a little bit apples and oranges. One went to a company for a unique circumstance, and the other is going to be departing to another country which she comes from and wants to raise her family there. So I think it wasn't for the kind of competitive reasons, the Howard that you were alluding to where people were raiding us from academia and the U.S. academia. But it's something we're monitoring, but as Rick points out, it's hard everywhere. As you know, I was involved in two of the site visits to review some of the branches. And I think it's really the balance of those first two guiding principles, the risk-taking of young faculty and trying to get them to the level of excellence. And there was a feeling amongst the site visitors, especially those that were back the second time, that many of the faculty, young faculty that were struggling in specific recommendations were given about focus, about ambition, were largely ignored and we were then, we had sort of the same set of problems was coming back four years later, but worse, because many of these people were coming up for tenure. And I just wanted to know whether, you know, we made then recommendations about how the leadership needs to nurture excellence and really take these young faculty under the wing and make sure that they focus, especially if they know they're coming up to tenure. And I just wanted to know if that was something that the Blue Ribbon Panel touched on in their review. I think we did not write about that specifically, but we certainly did discuss it in the on-site meetings. And I think we would absolutely, of course, agree with that. It's sort of the flip side of the coin here. If the review is to be meaningful, it's got to have teeth on the other side. We want to be doing, leaders should be doing everything they can to ensure the success of the rising faculty members. So I think, and I'm guessing that Dan would be in agreement with all of that. Yes, I certainly am. And I would add that actually the second of the site visits that Tony alluded to was at least the proximate cause of a lot of the changes in terms of the system of evaluation that certainly did catalyze some deep thinking about what we should be doing and how we should be responding to site visit reports and maybe making things a little bit more, both rigorous and uniform across the board. Of course, you deal with this in academia all the time. I mean, departments for tenure decisions and things like that. And one of the worst things is when the, well, two worst things is when the young people get no advice. But worse than that is when they get conflicting advice, which is, so I think that kind of soul searching of programs, some places are really good at it and other places are not good at it. But I think that was something we talked about certainly and Dan is certainly addressing. David, thanks very much for a really interesting summary. And I guess one hard question I do have at the end is this sort of ratio setting, right? I mean, both the Genome Institute is unusual because of the nature of the science that it does. But the Genome Institute is also unusual in the percentage of the total budget that's devoted to intramural instead of extramural activities. And how does that percentage get set? Is it completely up to the Institute? Are there congressional mandates? And how do you yourselves look at the ratio? I know the first year I came on Council, there was a budget cut and it was applied to the extramural program, but not the intramural program. And that obviously shifts the ratio between the two. And I think those sorts of decisions may be coming in the future as well. So some additional information there about that priority and ratio setting to me would be very valuable. So, David, as always, you asked great questions and there are several things that you're actually asking. One question is how are decisions being made in this steady state? And then the other question was how do decisions get made in an acute situation? Let me answer the second one first because what you alluded to, there was a decision a couple years ago with some budgetary downsizing that it was not proportionally given. But that's a very specific instance where I don't have total control as an Institute director because by the time we got our budget that year, it was well into the fiscal year and because these are programs, the intramural programs being run within the government, bills have to be paid. NIH leadership decides, and that's exactly what NIH leadership does decide, is what are the things when you go to settle your budget for a given year, what are the things you can and cannot control? And there was a decision across the NIH how much of that decrease would be applied to all intramural programs. There was no flexibility given. So in that particular case, that was an NIH-wide decision, not an NHGRI decision. The first question, which is, how does this ratio get set and who controls it, I think it's me. I mean, the honest truth is, with the exception of the fact that there is certainly a signal across the NIH, and Congress does watch this, they want the intramural program to be no more than 10% overall. So in our case, and actually I think, in our case in particular, it would probably not go well if it was based the size of the intramural program. I do believe that NIH leadership would push back at that. But where it sits relative to 20% or lower, is pretty much in probably my control and people at the leadership of the institute collectively giving me advice and others giving me advice. You can give me advice for a scientific counselor who's giving me advice. Part of the reason why, and I think when we had this conversation and the Blue Ribbon Panel review, in part was to help inform me about whether they came and said incredibly positive things that might make my thinking go wrong. Were they saying incredibly negative things that could make, and I will tell you in the past, there's been Blue Ribbon Panel reports have come in and have resulted in shrinkage of an intramural program because they felt that program was not first rate and that was what the institute director wanted to hear as an evaluation. So I am obviously now in a position to make decisions about this. That said, I think the ability when we're in the fiscal situation we're in, the ability to significantly adjust those numbers in reality and there's only one way they can go. It's not going to go up. It's very, very difficult. I mean, because there's a whole set of things associated with what we've built and we can't just terminate people. We're working within the federal civil service system and so nothing can happen quickly is sort of the answer. But if I would say in the long haul is this locked in stone at this ratio never to be changed now and I think Dan appreciates that and knows that and I think it's one of the reasons why he recognizes he has to strive for excellence and insist on excellence. All the way because I think there's no question that is going to have to be looked at continually because when there are opportunities now is not one of them to do any significant readjusting the ratio, I think it's going to be fair to say that one we should look at that and base it on the quality of the reviews, the latest blue ribbon panel, any other input I get from the two major advisory groups and so forth. Does that answer your question? Partially. I can tell from your look. Not completely. No, it does. I know that David said that they specifically decided not to address the relative strength of the intramural versus the extramural program to leave that within the institute and I think in the end that is what has to happen. I would just be mindful of those times when the same situation that occurred a couple years ago may occur again, which is like in the current budget year, you guys won't really know what's happening with the fiscal year budget probably until next spring. And if that is always handled by saying, well, we're late in the budget year so we can't touch intramural and we will apply it to extramural again, then what you'll see is the same thing that's a little bit evident in the bar graph is in 2010 and 11 and 12. In fact, the percent of the intramural program has crept up. It is a little bit bigger than it used to be if I see the bar graphs the right way. And I think there's a danger of creep because of the mechanics and the chaos of the budget process. And I definitely think you don't want that to guide the balance between the intramural and the extramural program. It's a fair point, but I do also think you illustrate the obvious, which is that the fiscal situation we've been in of late and continue to be is really creates all sorts of problems, unintended consequences that make it very difficult to do things optimally because it's exactly what you say that some of these things are in our control, some of these things are out of control and it's just not the way, if you made the most rational decision, what you want this to look like, it may not end up being exactly where you are because you don't have full control over every aspect of this. But I understand what you're saying. But Eric, I'll jump in and sort of, I think reinforce what David, David Kingsley was just speaking. Yes, it is. I think, you know, we didn't feature prominently in our report, but Rick mentioned it as well. I would say the absence of an articulated rationale or justification here is a problem. That is, the absence of an articulated rationale or justification for the 20%, clearly budgetary circumstances are going to have their influence, but it would be, there should in fact be some explicit discussion and consideration and articulation of a plan and a rationale to support it. Yeah, so I can't at all disagree with what David said. One thing that I will say, though, with regard to the tuning of the budget is that one of the things that we're now doing because of this lump sum kind of budgeting is that people are starting now to not replace people who leave their labs. And although the immediate effect of that on their budget may be relatively small because of the time of the year or whatever that happens, that will probably over the course of the next two or three years actually allow us to make some adjustments in terms of at least the overall intramural budget that we wouldn't be able to make like that, but one can make over time. Just as an example of my own lab, there were four people last year who left just for various reasons, various backs that got into medical school or that sort of thing. And I didn't replace any of them. Now, it actually, the funny thing, it's not so funny, is that my overall budget, which includes also some clinical people whose salaries are to some extent determined by federal civil service mandates in terms of step increases in their pay and so forth. My overall personnel budget, actually although I didn't replace four people who left, my personnel budget went up by a small amount, by a few thousand dollars. Now, the people left late in the year and next fiscal year, if I still don't replace those people, then my budget will go down. But that's unfortunately, the way the system works is that there's a lag in ones doing these kinds of things to when it actually has an impact on the overall budget. And I think that everybody is getting the message that, you know, we really have to be very careful with regard to our hires so that we, A, can stay within whatever limitations we have and B, that at the level of individual labs, that investigators may want to redistribute the ratio of personnel costs versus costs for supplies or whatever, chips for doing large-scale genomics, et cetera. So, just a comment on that. So we did talk about this and Dan, I wonder what your, so that's postdocs and students and technicians in the lab, but what about faculty? You lose some faculty. Forty-five is a fairly large number. In a small department, like the one I used to be in, or even the institute I'm now with 11 faculty members, losing one is a huge deal. Losing four out of 45 is a different deal, I think. Is that, and I think what we were talking about in the panel, and I think the BSC did as well, is that that number is partly history, right, and it's what came in. Are you trying to fill specific needs? You don't have to teach particular courses. That's often the university's excuse, or reason for wanting faculty. But is that, are you addressing it that way? Or is there a plan to, and I think that may be what David Page was getting at. That's a great question, and so in the course of the last couple of years, we have three individuals who have left Yardena, whom I mentioned who will be leaving shortly, and Elliot, and then one investigator who didn't get tenure and who actually moved to another institute. And we're not replacing any of the three of them, at least right now. And I would imagine that for the foreseeable future, we won't be. And so we will be thinking about those questions of, you know, how to rebalance things, and whether or not we'd want to change the organization a little bit to reflect different priorities. Let me point out that the panel did not say what the optimal number should be, who knows what it is, and we certainly didn't have any specific individual in mind. But that would be one way to deal with both the future, if there are rough times, but also even if they're not rough times, it gives you more discretionary things to do and to get that balance that you were talking about earlier. So we did talk about that a lot. I think that's important. Other questions or comments? Okay. So, David Page, thank you very much. I think you're officially done with this assignment. And I greatly appreciate your efforts. And Rick Myers, thank you very much for your service on this panel. And Dan, thank you for joining us today. And we're done. So, Mark, we're going to do just the last few things in the open session, right? Yeah. Okay. So, if you could give Mark his chair back.