 One of the things I did upon becoming scientific director was to create a named lectureship to honor Jeff's contributions to NHGRI and NIH and this is the annual Jeffrey Trent lecture in cancer research and as you can see we have brought four and then today a fifth very distinguished speaker to come and give that lecture and part of our reasons for doing this is to make sure we get Jeff to come back to campus once a year to visit and so he is here today and I asked him to just make a few remarks before Francis Collins introduces the Jeffrey Trent lecture of this year. Jeff. Thank you for in the shadow of the Capitol are reminded of the comment from the Arizona statesman for many many years Mo Udall in a similar situation he said well everything has already been said not everyone has already said it and that's certainly my responsibility today so I have actually three things to say which I hope haven't been said maybe in exactly the same words. Dr. Zaruni delighted that you're here I want to really say for all of you that are part of this NIH family that it is the most remarkable biomedical research institute in the world I hope that those of you that have your home here will indeed not take it for granted it is a gift to mankind to science and we're delighted for your efforts on our behalf the neck the next is I want you to realize just how much Francis and myself really contributed to the foundation and the formation and certainly the operationalization of NISC which is just essentially almost zero really this is an Eric Green complement to his tenacity and he was tenacious he would I didn't even have to go ask for funding I just sent him after Jim baddie and the others that really jumped into this to just get away from Eric and it was just an incredible tribute to Eric and really I think very little to anyone else and finally again my great honor to be so honored during my lifetime not posthumously you in this lecture by NHGRI and I thank Eric for his willingness to give it as well so thank you very much well what a wonderful day it has been here and it ain't over yet because Eric Green is not the only Eric with a lot of energy in this audience in this room so you're going to hear I'm sure some very exciting and inspiring words in a moment from Eric Lander who I have the privilege of introducing it has been a great day to be able to celebrate NISC and it's ten years of remarkable scientific achievements to celebrate Eric Green and his leadership to celebrate all the members of NISC who have been here during the day and who've made all this possible to have this wonderful lineup of presenters I mean what an amazing set of presentations have been folded into this day of science and thank you to all of you for coming and giving us such interesting and inspiring presentations and also to celebrate Jeff Trent as the person who got this scientific intramural program in genomics up and going and it's wonderful to have him here and to have this lecture which is named after his contribution to this place which has really been remarkable so what do you say about a guy named Eric Lander his CV is the stuff of legend it is after all whispered in the hallways the ways in which he came up out of a rather unlikely pathway to be in many ways the intellectual centerpiece of what has been going on in genomics for quite some time Eric as you probably know because it is the stuff of legend actually got his PhD in mathematics as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford went on to become a professor at Harvard teaching business negotiation and let me say as having been on the receiving end that that's probably the best possible preparation to be a genome center director and it gives the genome staff quite a lot of challenges to try to keep up with the logic which you know when he's telling you about why he needs another 20 million dollars by next week it all sounds so plausible and then you walk away and you go no wait and I think I just got landed which is after all the verb that his own group uses to describe what happens after you've been in a conversation with Eric and suddenly you've changed your life plan well you've been landed so yeah Eric has been innovative he has been disruptive in good ways when we were trying to get the mapping of the human genome done he put together various automated approaches to that that hadn't previously been assembled there was the genomatron if you happen to visit the whitehead genome center back in the mid 1990s there was this an amazing contraption that took up half a room and all these robots and conveyor belts but I learned later on that they only turned it on for visitors and the rest of the time there was a lot of people behind the wall with pipette man but I guess that's part of business negotiation training so after that of course deciding that the whitehead Institute for genome research which he had founded was just getting a little too small Eric has gone on to be the founder of a truly remarkable institution that Eli and Edith Broad Institute in Boston which is affiliated with both Harvard and MIT and many people predicted that Harvard and MIT would never be co-affiliated with anything so that in its own right is an achievement again coming back to that business negotiation thing now Eric in the process of putting that together has assembled a truly remarkable group of young scientists and any of you have the chance to go and visit with some of those people say hello to Eric but go talk to the young people in his his facility you will be truly amazed and inspired by what this next generation is coming up with in terms of genomic applications to almost every problem in biology and medicine that you can think of and so it is truly a delight to have the chance to have him here to give our Trent lecture but you know I don't feel like I've quite done justice to this introduction I I feel a song coming on if I had told Eric Green this ahead of time he would have told me I couldn't do it so sorry Eric well you know he is the king and you know what his institute is called for sale he spent MIT seemed oh so fine but that was so 1999 so then Eric mustard all his charm and he took that Eli guy by storm he's would do teams went into over other stuff team networks they're so cool and don't forget small molecules so time is spent