 And with that, I will turn it over to Eric. So good morning, everyone. And I would like to start off this open session of the May 2012 meeting of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research with something a little bit different, specifically an announcement that I believe you will find quite interesting and exciting. I've been at the National Human Genome Research Institute and HGRI and the National Institutes of Health for almost 18 years. I'm obviously overwhelmingly proud of NHGRI and of the NIH more broadly. And also, being a DC local, I've many times marveled at the Smithsonian Institution and its impressive collection of museums and research centers. At the same time, on many occasions, I've actually wondered why there is such a paucity of interactions between these two local mechas, both of which have incredible international reputations. Of particular relevance to NIH, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History showcases much of the science that is so relevant to our biomedical research pursuits. And that museum and NIH's main Bethesda campus are separated by less than 10 miles. Why are examples of substantive collaborations between NIH institutes and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History so few and far between, especially in light of our close proximity, our significant intellectual overlaps, and our shared interest in scientific outreach and education? Well, NHGRI has decided to address this question in a very serious way and to make an important move to reverse that historic trend. To set the stage for what we are about to announce, I would like to introduce several special guests who join us this morning. First is Ms. Elizabeth Dugall, who is the Associate Director for Public Engagement at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She oversees all the exhibition development, as well as education outreach and other programs at the museum. She has had an impressive professional career that you can review and we've set up a link off of the website for this Council's meeting that should have just gone live that has various information about this announcement. Our second guest who just arrived is Dr. Jonathan Cottington, who is the Associate Director for Research and Collections and also a senior curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He represents the museum's scientific interest in today's announcement, and again you can read about his distinguished background at the same website I just mentioned. And our third guest is Heather Verdo, who is Head of Corporate Giving for Life Technologies, Corporation, and also manages the Life Technologies Foundation, a non-profit arm of Life Technologies Corporation. Now the Life Technologies Foundation is dedicated to advancing science education and changing perspectives on how the application of biology can address societal needs. And in particular the Foundation supports programs that accelerate the adoption and understanding of genomics in healthcare. She has more than 20 years of experience for working for non-profits and in community relations. Well, welcome to all three of you, thanks for coming. And it's a pleasure to have you joining us at this announcement this morning. So it's with great enthusiasm that today we're formally announcing a major new collaboration and partnership with the National Institutes of Health, NHGRI, and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History to create an exhibition on genomics and the human genome. We anticipate that early in the summer of 2013, the National Museum of Natural History will open an approximately 2,500 square foot exhibition showcasing the field of genomics with particular emphasis on the human genome. The exhibition will be located in the museum's hall number 23. Now, that's easy to remember since it's the number of pairs of human chromosomes. Now in development, the exhibition is expected to include a number of organizing themes including the genome in you, the natural world, and health and humanity. There will also be elements that touch on evolution and on the expansion and exploration of the ethical, legal, and social implications of our burgeoning genomic knowledge. The timing for the opening of this exhibition is not accidental. April of 2013 will mark the 10th anniversary of the completion of the human genome project, which gave us our first detailed view of the human instruction book. That month will also reflect the 60th anniversary of the Watson-Crick description of the double helical structure of DNA. This new exhibition and its affiliated activities and programming will commemorate those two incredible achievements. But the goal of the exhibition is not just to celebrate those two historic milestones, it's also to look ahead, to acknowledge that we are in the early stages of a very exciting genomic era. While we have learned a remarkable amount about how the genome works and how it contributes to health and disease, the pace of research is only accelerating and becoming increasingly relevant to people. We have much to learn, much to understand about how to apply our new knowledge and much to capitalize on as we use genomics to improve our understanding of and interactions with the world around us. It's not enough just for researchers like me and others at NHGRI and the genomics community to be excited about the human genome and the opportunities before us. The knowledge that we are gaining through genomics is transformative, both philosophically about our place in nature and biologically about what can go wrong with our genomes. Because genomic knowledge will become increasingly relevant to us, it is all the more urgent for the public to understand it and to appreciate the implications it has for society and for individuals' own medical care. I am confident that this new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History will help us do just that. The new exhibition will be viewed by more than 7 million visitors that annually enter the museum, people of all ages and from all around the world. Importantly, the exhibition will provide the foundation for a larger array of educational programs and outreach activities from special websites to the development of new educational materials for students, teachers and the public. Moreover, after some time in Washington, the exhibition is planned to travel to communities across the nation and international destinations as well. Now, neither NHGRI nor the National Museum of Natural History has available funds for an exhibition and initiative of this scale. As a result, none of this would be possible without the support of our generous donors who have stepped up to make our collaborative vision a reality. Life Technologies, a genomics company, has pledged 3 million dollars for the design and construction of the exhibition. Additional funding has been provided with the assistance of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress to raise private sector funds that catalyze public-private partnerships that support the NIH mission. I will ask Elizabeth Dugal to talk in a few minutes about the additional donors to date. These additional monies will support the development of many of the outreach and educational programs for which both institutions are extremely grateful. In summary, the summer of 2013 will bring the opening of one of the largest and most extensive collaborations between these two great institutions, the Smithsonian and the NIH. Based on months of initial intense planning between the staffs of each institution, I can tell you that this genomics exhibit is going to be way cool and truly fitting of a field that is transforming so many aspects of biomedicine. I'd now like to ask Elizabeth Dugal to say a few words about our new partnership. Elizabeth has been an enthusiastic supporter of this exhibition from day one, and we're truly enjoying our interactions with her and her staff. Elizabeth. Thank you, Dr. Green-Erik. I have to say on behalf of the National Museum of Natural History, I wish to thank the advisory council and the staff at NHGRI for joining the Smithsonian in this historic partnership. We are indeed truly honored to have this opportunity to collaborate with the nation's preeminent medical research entity, the National Institutes of Health, on such a vital and critical project. Since my first meeting with Dr. Green and his colleagues, I have to confess this has been an incredible journey for me personally, and I know for my colleagues. We've been so inspired by the importance and possibilities of this initiative, and the passion and enthusiasm and everyone at NHGRI is frankly quite infectious and compelling, and I know Erik's trying to turn me into a geek as we go along, and I've enjoyed every single moment we've had on this project so far. But more seriously, as the months have passed and the more we've worked together, I come to realize that there's a really true synergy and convergence between our institutional missions and our strategic plans going forward. More specifically, the mission of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is to understand the natural world and our place in it. Well, one of the key pillars of the museum's current strategic plan focuses on global genomics, while the macro trends for the natural history and science museums highlight the crucial need to rapidly bring in line, the front of house of our exhibits, to tie more in with the behind the scenes research, i.e. genomics. So what could be more befitting for the largest natural history museum in the world to engage and educate our tens of millions of visitors, both onsite and online, about the transformative role of genomics to the life sciences in the 21st century? As the pace of research is only accelerating and becoming increasingly relevant to everyone's daily aspects of our lives, it is urgent for our visitors to identify, what you all might think is pretty obvious, but the DNA is the universal code that connects all life on earth, past and present. It is our role as a museum to educate society about the revolutionary implications for health and for an individual's opportunity for a more personalized approach to medical care. Additionally, with this exhibit, we can highlight how genomics helps us better understand the natural world around us, and my colleague, Dr. Jonathan Cottington, will talk more about comparative genomics research we do at the museum and how it relates to the work of NHGRI. And also to amplify on Dr. Green's remarks, this high-tech forward-looking exhibit is what I'd want to say is just the beginning, or just the starting point. It will be on view in the museum for a minute of one year, and then it will travel. But equally important, the exhibit will be complimented by a rich and deep and dynamic array of public programs, educational and outreach activities, including a large digital and social media presence, and possibly a documentary film. I know this exhibit will be extremely popular and relevant with our visiting public over the years to come, and again, I wish to thank NHGRI for reaching out to the Smithsonian to be your partner. Now, one of the other key things that I wanted to thank, the dream of this project and this initiative could not be realized without the support and vision of Life Technologies is our lead sponsor on this project. As many of you aware, the Life Technologies Foundation has made a remarkable gift of $3 million to support this exhibition. We are truly grateful and cannot thank you enough, and I wish to do a little round of applause if I may. In addition, more than $500,000 has been raised through the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, including support from the Bryn Wojcicki Foundation, the Selgen Corporation, New England Biolabs, Genitech, Pacific Biosciences, and Mike and Beth Hunkapiller. Thank you all so very much, and we are working on more to come, so any suggestions, please let me know because we have a lot more ideas that we want to bring forward to enhance the initiative. So it's been my pleasure to meet with you this morning, and I extend the invitation far in advance for the June 13 opening, and thank you very much. Thank you, Elizabeth. I'd now like to ask Jonathan Cottington to tell us about the importance of the exhibition to the Museum Scientific Programs. Jonathan. I too would like to thank the Advisory Council and NHGRI for joining with the Smithsonian in this historic partnership. The exhibit, of course, is one aspect of this, but there are other aspects that have to do with research. My colleague Elizabeth James Smithson said in his will in 1827, increase in diffusion of knowledge, and those four words have stood us at the Smithsonian in good stead for the last 175 years. Elizabeth is in charge of the diffuse part, and I and my colleagues are in charge of the increased part. It's a great partnership. The National Museum of Natural History, probably all of you know it mainly as a place where you take your kids to show them the wonders of science, but actually it's also a very large and powerful research institution. We work basically on three things, the earth and planetary systems, any aspect of the natural world and human and cultural diversity. We host over 300 resident scientists a year, and we collaborate with about 500 others all around the earth. Every year we have about 10,000 scientific visitors visiting the backside of the collection, that's not the right way to put that, the back end of the collection, and they stay for about 40,000 visitor days. So you might wonder why this collaboration between NHGRI and the Smithsonian took so long to realize itself. I think it's because of the revolutionary effect that genomics on the one hand and information technology on the other has had for the study of the natural world. The museum houses about 127 million specimens. That's about 95% of everything the Smithsonian owns, and I think nobody actually knows the real figure, but I think that's somewhere between 500 and 800,000 species. All of those have genomes. It's interesting to watch the development of the technology happen as maybe not third generation sequencing, but next generation sequencing snips DNA into little strings and then basically runs those through machines at amazing coverage to produce a genome. As we sit here at room temperature, about 80 million specimens downtown are having their DNA snipped into little strings by DNA ases as the collections age. At some point, perhaps those two trends are going to converge, and that building will be the largest and densest collection of genomes on earth available because it belongs to the American people for any scientist who want to use it. But we also think that genomics and informatics is going to drive most of the research on the biological world in the 21st century, and to that end, we've also constructed what we think is the largest natural history biorepository so far on earth, about 24 liquid nitrogen tanks, 54 freezers, approximately 3 to 4 million 2 million slots of capacity. Thinking that the world only has, at the moment, about 2 million described species, we think that the Smithsonian is well positioned to basically become a museum of genomics. In order for museums to continue to play their critical role in vouchering and concentrating biodiversity for these by the research community, we need to start building a museum of genomics. It basically means DNAs and tissue quality samples vouchered by classical specimens from around the world. That's part of our five-year plan. The other initiative that we've taken to move into the new century is a 15,000-square-foot genomics lab down on the mall, which we invite all of you to come down and look at. We're very proud of it, and we'll be filling it up with stuff and researchers as time goes by. And in that regard, I would also really like to thank Life Technologies for their support. It's not only the support for the exhibit, but also we're talking with them about supporting our research behind the scene, getting us up to speed on some of these new technologies. And if that all works out, we'll have even more to thank them for. So with that, I guess back to Dr. Green. And I want to take the opportunity to echo my own personal thanks, the institute's thanks to Heather Verdo and also representing Life Technologies, the lead donor. We're grateful to the company's generous support, but we also are gratified to see how the ideas and technological advances generated through the Human Genome Project have helped to fuel such a large and diverse company as Life Technologies. It's really illustrative how investments of the federal government to generate new knowledge and innovation can mature into beneficial contributions to the American economy, and then in turn now Life Technologies is giving some of that back to this new collaborative endeavor. Finally, I also want to point out that NHGRI and the Smithsonian have established a joint advisory group to give guidance and input about this exhibition as it becomes a reality over the next year. And a full list of that membership is also available on that same webpage, if you find that. One member of that advisory group is NHGRI council member Jim Evans. We wanted to have a representative or council and we thank Jim for his willingness to help us in this fashion. So with that as a background, I want to open the floor from questions from council members or others here at the meeting and you can direct your questions either to me or to any of our guests, or I should also point out you can direct questions and I may divert them over to Vence Bonham and Carla Easter of the NHGRI staff who are really the NHGRI leads for this project and are working along with others at the institute very hard in recent weeks. Heather, you were going to say, is that great? Please. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't get that information, please. All the way here from San Diego, you know. Come on. I got jet lag and everything. Well, I feel very fortunate to be here today. So as many people as have thanked us, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful opportunity to collaborate with two amazing institutions. So thank you on behalf of Life Technologies. I would like to read a statement as well. Our chairman and CEO, Greg Lucier, sends his regrets. He's unable to be here today, but he asked me to convey how honored we are to have Life Technologies Foundation support this educational opportunity and this partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the National Human Genome Research Institute. I didn't think I was going to get that right. All right. The completion of the Human Genome Project, as you all know, I'm preaching to the choir, was a monumental achievement for science and humanity. By unlocking the code of life, vast new areas of science opened. And through innovation and discovery, we learn more every day about ourselves and the world that we live in. We are at an inflection point in the history of human biology. What scientists, excuse me, what science has taught us about genomics in the last 10 years, most likely will be dwarfed by the revolutionary advancements of genomics to come not only in medicine, but to solve for the challenges that our world faces. The threats we know are global. Pandemics, bioterrorism, fossil fuel dependence, chronic disease, water and food security, economic sustainability. Their scientific solutions will require the effort, knowledge and motivation of scientists and citizens alike. There has never been a better time to reignite the call for scientific ingenuity and discovery on an international scale as we collectively endeavor to face 21st century challenges. We are hopeful that this exhibit will not only educate visitors on the powerful information that we can now unlock within our DNA, but also serve as a catalyst to improve and inspire the world about the critical work and important work that scientists are doing to make our lives even better. Thank you. I'll now open this up for questions, either from council members or the room. So Rick, want to start with you? I just love this. I think this is one of the most exciting things. I can't wait to see it and I really hope, I've mentioned to some of you, I hope we can participate in it as well. What, I'm curious about how you're going to go about building the exhibit. I don't actually, even though we've done stuff with museums, I'm not actually sure what that takes. Is it, have you already, do you already have the concept down? Is it something that is going to be where you'll seek advice from other scientists or people who participated in etc? So is that, is that already planned? I have learned a tremendous amount in just the past couple of months. It's very common. Vence, do you want to give an overview? I think, but there's others who could as well, from the various people here from the Smithsonian, please let's make sure we get the right, actually Vence, we want you up here. That's why the camera's rolling. So let me talk about it a little bit, but I actually want to give it over to the expert and I'll give it from the frame of the Genome Institute and we've been working very closely with the exhibition team at the Smithsonian on developing ideals and stories. What are the messages, what are the themes that we want to make sure we share with the public? And coming up with those stories, they're both going to help to communicate information, but are also accessible to the public. And so, so this is the process that we've been going through in helping to identify those areas. I'm pleased to introduce to you Cara Blonde, who is the lead exhibition developer from the Smithsonian on the project and is actually guiding us through this process of developing this exhibit and so she can share from her perspective. We use an iterative process that we're still right at the beginning of, where we kind of develop a conceptual framework for the exhibit and start to imagine what kind of activities visitors will do in the space, what kind of visual look and feel the exhibit will have. And at three phases of design, like a third of the way through, two thirds of the way through, and most of the way there, we get buy-in from the larger community. We'll go out to our advisory group at those stages of design. We'll check in with the scientists who've been really generous, both from the museum and from NHGRI on content. So we're still in that very first conceptual phase of design and we'll move really quickly over the next six months or so to complete the design and then we move into the fabrication and construction piece, which takes the next six months or so before we install the exhibit. Eric and I spoke on Friday and we'd love to be able to present some of these plans to you all, perhaps in the fall at an upcoming meeting, just so you can have a sense of where we're going with the project. And as we move forward, if you have any particular thoughts on particularly public programs that we can do, we're thinking about so many conferences and symposiums and all types of things. And if you want to give that to Vence, that would be great because, again, as you said, we really want to engage the experts and bring you all out to the public and show you off a little bit. I really want to stress the iterative and the partnership aspects of this. Vence, you have a group of what about six people within the instance, six NHGRI staff, and they go down to the Smithsonian. I mean, there's weekly meeting hours of meetings every week now and will be for the next year. So this is not something like just go off and design center and come back and show us a product. This is constant ongoing, a lot of little input along the way or a lot of a lot of input along the way. Correct me if I'm wrong. We do a lot of also focus groups with our key audiences to make sure that the message you're being hit home. We'll also be doing testing of the name of the exhibit, et cetera, et cetera. So there's also is a scientific process behind it all to ensure that it's successful. We have seven million people coming in your door every year. You can just walk out on the floor or anything. They do. They just go on the floor and just start as a little focus group and do a survey. So Jim. One question and one comment. The comment, as I was really delighted to hear Eric's comment that evolution would be part of this, it's such a stunning showcase of genomics and a desperate need in this country for education about it. So I was glad to hear that. My question is what kind of, in what other media will there be a presence to really publicize this besides just the exhibit and the web? Are you going to roll out publicity in other ways? So it will be symposium and you alluded to the possibility of some other TV programming. Yeah, we're working. It's a good question. We obviously believe that the whole footprint of digital media is critically important nowadays to engage everyone. So we're working on a number of different opportunities in collaboration. We're looking at apps and other things. But we're also working with Smithsonian Networks. It's not for sure, but we are working with them on a possible documentary that would complement the exhibit. We're also in talks with PBS about some particular activities for children. So that's on that piece. As we move closer, we will be working on a PR and communications strategy plan. We want to have something that's a proper communications plan to ensure we can get the voice out there as much as we can. Howard? So I'll pretend this question is for my children. And that is, are there going to be hands-on activities with this? Just for the children, of course. Yes, for sure. We know that that's one of the most engaging ways for our visitors to interact with content at sort of an introductory level. And so yes, we know that we want that to be part of the exhibit experience. I do hope you all will come down to the museum. We can give you a tour of some of our current exhibits. But one of the new initiatives we have is a new education center that's going to be opening around the same time as the exhibit next year. It's a gorgeous space, 15,000 square feet of space. It's being reclaimed for the museum. And this is a place where children and families can interact. Yes, in a deeper dive, as we call it. And this is an opportunity, actually. I think we're supposed to have a lot more hands-on activities and be able to do more targeted type of things. So come on down and we can give you a taste of what's to come. Pamela? I just want to come in. I've actually been already consulted. They had a focus group with three of the scientists. So Charmaine Royle and Jeff Long and I were on the phone for an hour or while ago talking with people that Vince had brought together for this conversation about how to present race. And it was a really interesting conversation. And I have great hope for how it'll turn out. I do have one question and that is what's the plan for where it'll travel? With an organization called Science North up in Canada on the traveling portion. And our intention is to have it travel for four years, I think two or three venues per year. And we're still doing some market research to figure out where exactly it'll go. We've been in conversations with a number of different museums around the country and around the world, really, to see where it can travel. But we're still kind of in the nascent stages of that process. And there has been interest expressed overseas that are obviously just ideas at this point. So I wouldn't, again, we expect it probably will travel internationally. Ross? Yeah, well, first of all, echo my excitement about this. This is fantastic. The Natural History Museum is always one of the highlights of my family's visits to D.C. And, you know, the displays there, you know, you always go to the dinosaur hall and all this and you're sort of exposed to things and you learn from what's there on display. But, you know, the genome, that's getting way, way deeper. And I was just, this idea just came up to me and I thought I'd get it out of my head, was people will be asking questions themselves, you know, they want to know more. Is there a way to adapt some like a Siri kind of technology? So maybe a little, a booth you could go in and ask your question, you know, what's my risk for type two diabetes and get some kind of, some kind of informative response. I know you can't genotype everybody comes in, but there is some helpful information. I just try to connect in because people are all these questions. And what Jim's question is, am I really descended from a chip? You know, maybe get some clarification about that, you know? These are great questions and great ideas. Carlos? So I also want to echo my excitement about this. I was actually an intern at the Smithsonian. That's where I got some of my start in science. So it's just awesome to see this. And along those lines, is there hopefully this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, right? And so going down, we could imagine more programs that could happen, particularly on the research and training side, where the interest of genome and those of the Smithsonian could really go hand in hand expand the biology. We're already sharing some interns back and forth and postdocs are volunteering. Frankly, we need to catch up at the Smithsonian with the level of genomics that's done around here. You guys are obviously the cutting edge. We're a little bit behind, but Life Technologies is going to help us do that. Just to give you one idea of the kind of things we bring to the, we're thinking about an expedition to Namibia, which it will be two days and landrovers out beyond all manner of civilization. And in order to increase the world's basically coverage with genome quality tissues of important aspects of biodiversity there, the question is, what's a genome quality tissue mean when you're that far out from civilization? I mean, how do you actually know that what you do will actually produce the kind of quality genome that we need? So there are lots of questions though like that that will be collaborating on. I think we'll take maybe one or two more. Rick, do you want, or David, did you? I saw a light on. We're good? Friends want to say one thing. I just wanted to add to that. I think this is going to create a great opportunity to link various extramural grantees and our intramural program with the Smithsonian just to make those communication so those opportunities, those training opportunities to expand both the quality of trainees that Smithsonian has and the experience and exposure trainees that are engaged with our programs. Rick, last question. Just I'm trading into something that you guys have got to be great experts at which is raising the funds to do this, but I would just comment that I'll bet you you could get every genome scientist who's participated in any part of this to donate because I mean, and even broader because I think so many of us or so many of the community in this field are very much interested in in disseminating education outreach and people understanding this. So I'm going to ask someone from the National Institutes of Health Foundation to stand up and that's Andrea Bouchon and Kate Gilmore. Katie Gilmore. Why do you come up to the mic because I think maybe people do need to know a little more about the foundation for NIH. So the foundation for NIH we've been around for about 15 years supporting the work of the NIH both in research and training efforts. We've raised over $610 million over that period of time and we're very excited to be working with NHGRI and the Smithsonian on this particular effort and we will be doing a very large fundraising push and you'll all be hearing about it pretty soon. So I really want to I've spent a lot of time with the foundation giving them ideas of people they should contact but but if you have other ideas and you heard some of the ones that have done and others that are still being in we're in discussion or foundation is in discussion with but if you have ideas please let us know we will put you in touch with the foundation and we want to and again as I think Vence alluded to and Elizabeth alluded to the more we raise the more multi-dimensional more expansive we can get especially in the education outreach programs. So I just want to close this by thanking everyone including all these guests that came for today this concludes the announcement of this new collaborative initiative between NHGRI and the Smithsonian Institution. The next year I can tell you is going to be associated with a frenzy pace of work as the exhibition and the related materials are designed and assembled. I'm actually profoundly confident it's going to turn out to be extraordinary and I think symbolically fitting for these two great institutions and also the exciting field of genomics. So thank you all for coming and thank you all for listening to this announcement.