 Okay, next on the agenda is the statement of understanding. This is a document that gets reviewed at every February council meeting. I'll go over the document describes the manner in which NHGRI will interact with the council, sort of a list of council responsibilities and limitations of what staff authorities are. So I'm gonna review it and I'm gonna highlight a couple of the changes that have been made since last year's statement of understanding. And at the end, I will ask for a vote from the council to accept the document. So all applications that undergo peer review are required to undergo a second level of review by the advisory council. Now there are some exceptions to this. Certain kinds of fellowship applications are exempt from council review. We, NHGRI here, are required to present certain types of applications to the council. And these include large applications like program projects, all cooperative agreement applications, institutional training grant applications or T32s, applications that are deferred from a previous round, applications with human subjects concerns or animal welfare concerns, applications from foreign institutions and applications requiring special council review. Now I use the word present to council and our definition of that is to list these types of applications on the closed session agenda. We may or may not have a presentation about those applications, but that's the mechanism that we use to report these to the council. Now one change to the SOU this year has to do with special council review. Special council review is triggered when an applicant already has $2 million of total support and any new application that is coming to council review undergoes special council review. The one change we're making to that process is that we are discounting grants that will terminate within 90 days of the council meeting. You're gonna compute a total baseline of $2 million. It doesn't seem fair to hold an API to that if that funding is going to be lost or eliminated within 90 days. And those applications that are not listed on the closed session agenda end up in the on block vote which is taken at the end of the meeting tomorrow after all of the applications on the CFA has been reviewed. Now the on block is our assumption that all applications receive a fair and accurate peer review. And so the council is simply asked to concur with the IRG. So any questions about the types of applications that we report to council? Okay, moving right along. Now there are four actions that you as council members can take regarding any application that is being reviewed. You can concur with the IRG, the initial review group. You may defer an application for re-review because it received an inadequate or inappropriate peer review. You can recommend an application for high program priority HPP or low program priority LPP. HPP means the application in your judgment is of a key interest to NHGRI, but its impact score may not put it within the typical funding range. And LPP is the opposite. It received a very good impact score but you think it's of lower program priority for NHGRI. You can also defer an application because you the council requires additional information in order to conduct the second level of council review. So any questions about those four actions? Now there's something relatively new called expedited council concurrence or ECC. There are certain kinds of applications that can be put on the ECC report. And these include small business SBIR, STTR applications and non-solicited LC research grants. Now there are other types of applications that go on the ECC, but those two that I just cited, small business and LC, they're paid out of funds that are programmed for those kinds of research areas. We can't reprogram that money. Therefore it seems less, it's not, how do I wanna say this? It would be less imperative to bring those to council's attention for a discussion since we can't reassign the money to other areas of research. Now there are other types of applications, career development awards such as K99, R00 and K01. Small budget or short term applications like R03s and R21s are also put on the ECC. And this year we are adding the F99 K00. So that's the pre-doctoral to postdoctoral transition awards. Now the point of using the ECC is to allow us to spread the workload here at NHGRI. Absent the ECC, our grants administration branch would be waiting for three large bolus workloads to be dumped in their lap after each council meeting. So the ECC is sent to the ECC subcommittee and Steve Rich, Len Panaccio and Lisa Parker are members of that subcommittee. They get this report about four to five weeks in advance of each council meeting. They approve the report and that allows the grants administration branch to start working up those awards. They don't have to wait for the full council meeting. We do present an ECC report in each council. So now at the February council meeting at the end of the CSA, there's a link there. You can go back and you can see all the applications that were approved by the ECC subcommittee four to five weeks ago. Any questions about the ECC? Okay. Now the next section of the SOU is largely about staff authorities. And this defines the kinds of actions that the staff can take without bringing them to the attention of the council or getting your concurrence. So these center largely around administrative supplements, they can be made to existing grants if the work is within scope of what was originally proposed in the application. The supplements can extend, can be an extension of funding for up to one year without council approval. And the supplements can also be up to the level of support approved by council when the grant was initially reviewed. So all of the supplement requests are presented to the extramural leadership team. And that includes Eric, the four division directors, the two office directors, Valentina and Vince and myself. We review these supplement requests and approve them. And then they are reported to council. There are some additional special programs that include the NHGRI action plan, the trans-NIH research supplements to promote diversity and the medical scientist training program. We can also make supplements to these areas. Oh, there is one last point that I wanna raise. In the current statement of understanding, it says that we are allowed to convene the council meeting by an electronic format, such as what we're doing now, but it specifies that that must be the result of some kind of declared emergency, national declared emergency. So that certainly made sense three years ago with the pandemic, but I would advocate that we be given the latitude to hold a council meeting by electronic format and absent any kind of national disaster. So that's the additional change that we're going to make to the statement of understanding. Any questions about this last area of supplements or administrative actions? Okay, so can I get a motion to approve the minor revisions that were made? And the second, all in favor? Anyone opposed or abstaining? Thank you very much.