 Thank you, Rudy. Once again, I want to welcome all of you to this open session of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. While I normally would have an in-person audience for my director's report, the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic has obviously caused me to have to take up a different venue. So I'm doing this presentation while sitting here alone in my conference room. Now in addition, and to accommodate the generally overall shorter council meeting, we decided to shorten my director's report considerably, but nonetheless we retain what I think are a useful assortment of updates that we want to share with you. And as with the rest of this open session, my director's report is being videotaped and that recording will be made available as a permanent archive on NHGRI's website, genome.gov. We do have some new council members and so especially for those who are new to our council meetings, such as those new members, but also others who may be tuning in, I want to make you aware of the electronic resource that we develop for each of my director's reports. It's analogous to a supplemental materials of a published paper and it can be accessed at the URL shown at the bottom of the slide. The slides that I will show during my director's report are also available electronically at this site, either in a PDF format or a PowerPoint format. And when there are documents or relevant websites associated with a particular slide, you will find that document number indicated at the bottom right of that slide. And that document number references materials that can be accessed and or downloaded at the website whose URL is shown here. And again, the dedicated web page that's been built up for this director's report will be a part of the historic record kept on genome.gov. Now there'll be a number of presentations of other presentations during the open session of this council meeting. My director's report is tailored around these presentations, so I'm not going to discuss in detail what others are going to cover. Immediately following my director's report, we're actually going to have four concept clearances presented by staff of the Institute's extramural research program. Luis Cubato was going to present two related training proposals, one on research experiences and genomic research for genetic counselors, and one on research experiences and genomic research for data scientists. The third concept on technology development for single molecule protein sequencing will be presented by Tina Gatlin. And then the fourth concept on investigator-initiated research on genetic counseling processes and practice will be presented by Ebony Matt. For the rest of my director's report, I will cover the seven areas listed here which have reliably provided a nice framework for the topics that we wanted to cover. And we will start with some general NHGRI updates. Now if we go back to February, which seems like it was years ago, not just months ago, but back in February and immediately after we ended the second day of the February council meeting, I had the opportunity to travel, well actually, I Ubered to Capitol Hill immediately after the meeting to meet with several congressional members and their staffs. The photograph shown here was taken at the end of a very productive and engaging meeting with Representative Eric Swalwell of California's 15th District. We had a wide-ranging discussion about genomics, precision medicine, and the future of healthcare. I can report to you that Representative Swalwell is extremely interested and quite well-informed about genomics and its many promising developments. Part of our work here at NHGRI is to inform members of Congress, like Representative Swalwell, to respond to their questions about the science that taxpayers' dollars are funding. And I was pleased of this opportunity to fill this part of my job back in February on that day. Now while my meeting with Representative Swalwell was enjoyable and it was productive, my favorite appointment since the last council meeting occurred a couple days later when I had a spirited encounter with eight energetic yellow Labrador Retriever puppies as part of the NIH Puppy Cam 2020. This event showcased the important role that dogs play in various aspects of human health, such as serving as support and therapy animals, stress relievers, and companions. In NIH Puppy Cam 2020 was live-streamed and started a set of puppies who were in training to become service dogs. Throughout the day, various NIH staff, including some prominent senior leaders, were asked to hang out with the puppies while being interviewed. I can tell you from first-hand experience that this sounds easier than it is, especially knowing that the interview was being live-streamed and when you have a puppy laser-focused on eating your lapel microphone, as you can see on the right. Nonetheless, I survived this very tough assignment and was able to talk about the importance of dogs in my life and even provide some facts about the dog genome. NIH Puppy Cam 2020 was a huge success on social media with almost 50,000 views on Twitter and over 170 million impressions of the various tweets from NIH staff. NHGRI's Genomic 20 Strategic Planning process is now well into its home stretch en route to developing the Institute's new strategic plan, which will be published in October of this year. To date, Genomics 2020 has been associated with over 50 events that gathered input and feedback from the research, healthcare, education, policy, and diverse public communities. These events have included town halls and workshops, meeting sessions, advisory committee discussions, webinars, and poster sessions, among others. A draft version of the strategic plan was made available for comment last month with feedback received through various means. We are now actively synthesizing that feedback and finalizing the strategic plan, which will be submitted for publication in the early summer. Moving on then to some general NIH updates. Dwayne Alexander, the former director of the Unis County Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, or NICHD, passed away in February. He was 79 years old. As NICHD director, from 1986 to 2009, Dwayne led efforts to improve the health of mothers and children through research and its translation into practice. He presided over efforts that led to the near elimination of maternal to child transmission of HIV in the United States, the prevention and correction of neural tooth defects, such as spina bifida, and the identification of the genetic basis of Fragile X and Red Syncopes. Now, the rapidly changing situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is raising many questions by many people. Several government websites are available that provide relevant information about the virus and the disease that it causes, such as those as the Centers for Disease Control Prevention, or CDC, and the NIH. Now, for NIH grantees and applicants, a new COVID-19 resource is now available on the NIH Grants and Funding website. In addition, NIH regularly issues news releases regarding COVID-19 related funding, funding research and scientific findings. Finally, NIH director Francis Collins' blog provides another good source of updated information. Needless to say, NIH is aggressively tackling the biomedical research challenges associated with COVID-19. These efforts include developing programs and mechanisms for funding research grants related to COVID-19. For example, a number of NIH institutes and centers have issued funding opportunity announcements or FOAs to solicit research proposals related to COVID-19. Now, recognizing the interest and opportunity in the genomics community to contribute to COVID-19 research, NHGRI has issued a notice of special interest, or NOSI, regarding the opportunity for making urgent competitive revisions to existing research grants. Specifically, this NOSI invited current NHGRI grantees to submit proposals for adding research elements to their existing grants. These elements needed to address scientific questions of direct and immediate relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic. Applications in response to this NHGRI NOSI were due on May 15. Now, in May, we typically provide an update about the activities on Capitol Hill related to appropriations, as lawmakers are usually drafting bills to try to have a budget in place prior to the beginning of the next fiscal year on October 1. In fact, we typically would have seen the first versions of the appropriation bills being voted on and would have a sense of the possible budgetary numbers for the Department of Health and Human Services, and perhaps even the NIH. However, as you can appreciate, this is not a typical year. Nonetheless, even in the midst of all the legislative work related to COVID-19, staffers are also simultaneously drafting budgets for fiscal year 2021. We hope to see those numbers sometime soon, but as with many things in the moment, we will have to wait and see what happens next. Meanwhile, and as a reminder for fiscal year 2020, the final NIH appropriation was $41.7 billion, with NHGRI receiving around $606 million as can be seen in the middle column. This reflected a roughly $2.6 billion increase for NIH and a $31 million increase for NHGRI as seen in the second column from the right. Overall, this made NIH's increase about 6.6 percent, and NHGRI's increase about 5.4 percent, as you can see in the far right column. Moving on then to some general genomics updates, Kenneth Pagan, a geneticist who served as the director of the Jackson Laboratory, or JAX, from 1989 to 2003, died in February. He was 92 years old and actively conducted research until shortly for his death. His research spanned investigating the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation to study recombination hotspots in the human and mouse genomes. He was also an early advocate for mapping and sequencing the human genome. According to a statement from the JAX quote, Pagan was a brilliant scientist, a treasured colleague and mentor, and a towering figure in JAX's history. He will forever be remembered for the indelible impact he had on JAX, including his leadership in rebuilding the lab following the devastating fire of May of 1989. Mary Shimayama, who's associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin, principal investigator, a PI of the RAT Genome Database, and one of the leaders and major contributors to the NHGRI Alliance of Genome Resources, sadly passed away in February. Mary also served as a co-PI of the Sematic Cell Gene Editing Consortium's Dissemination and Coordination Center. She was a strong proponent of the use of model organism data and bioinformatic methods to support research into human diseases. And James Taylor, professor of computer science and biology at Johns Hopkins University, passed away in April. James was one of the founders and developers of the Galaxy Project, an open source platform for data intensive genomic research with an international community of users and developers. A strong advocate for open genomic data science and reproducible research, his work in biomedical data science education and training for the Galaxy Project inspired and benefited many scientists around the world. He was also a lead investigator for the NHGRI Anvil platform. James made numerous other significant contributions to NHGRI and Genomics starting with his work on the ENCODE pilot project as a graduate student at Penn State University. He also had a commendable record of serving at NHGRI and other NIH reviewed panels. The National Academy of Sciences recently announced their newly elected members of particular relevance to the genomics community at NHGRI are the individuals listed here. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to these colleagues with a special shout out to Howard Chang, one of the new council members. And then in breaking news from last week, former council member Aviv Ragev will leave the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard later this summer to join Genentech as the new executive vice president of Genentech Research and Early Development or G-RED. In her new role, Aviv will continue her research spanning cell circuits, tissue circuits, and human biology and disease, including translational work involving patient biology and therapies. She'll be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in August, but her laboratory will continue at the Broad Institute for one more year. Moving on then to the NHGRI Extramural Research Program. The Cancer Genome Atlas or TCGA was a coordinated effort between NHGRI and the National Cancer Institute or NCI. Although this project completed data generation in 2016, its data and resources continue to be used for studying the molecular basis of cancer. TCGA partnered with the International Cancer Genome Consortium or ICGC and the PAN Cancer Analysis of Whole Genome project. And the major findings from this project were published in Nature and Nature Journals in February. Now this nature collection included 24 papers with relevant links to data portals and data sets. The cross-tumor analysis involved over 2,600 cancer genome sequences and their matching normal genome sequences across 38 tumor types. And that enabled scientific discoveries of fundamental cancer biology, including the ability to infer the order of cancer-driving mutations that may have happened decades earlier. Innovations in large-scale data sharing among international partners in a cloud-based environment was an essential part of this project's success. Now, NHGRI has extended the receipt date related to two new funding opportunities from Mendelian Genomics Research Consortium. As I mentioned in my February Directors Report, NHGRI intends to fund research centers that will discover novel associations of Mendelian conditions as well as develop and apply approaches to discover causal genomic variants in known Mendelian conditions for which a canidine was not identified by exome sequencing. NHGRI will also fund a data coordination center that will manage data release and disseminate findings, coordinate program logistics and administrative duties, and oversee an opportunity fund for follow-up functional studies of discoveries made by the research centers. Now applications for the research centers and data coordination center are now due on July 15, 2020, and all applicants are encouraged to submit letters of intent by June 15, 2020. The Human Genome Reference Program, or HGRP, represents NHGRI's continued commitment to refining and maintaining the human genome reference sequence. Specifically, HGRP is a multi-component effort that aims to improve the human genome reference sequence and foster its long-term sustainability. At the February Council meeting, I announced the first two components of this program, which were awarded last fall. Specifically, a Human Genome Reference Center at Washington University, and a High Quality Human Reference Genomes Sequencing Center at University of California, Santa Cruz. This spring awards were made for a third component, the genome reference representation. This component will focus on research and development for establishing next generation genome reference representations that capture human genome variation and enable research on the full diversity of populations. Awards were made to Hang Lee at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Mark Chasen at the University of Southern California, and Han Lee Gee at Stanford University. These new projects will seed an open source model that encourages the integration of community-based tool development for genomics, epigenomics, function, and clinical research into the HGRP. And HGRP is expanding our successful genome sequencing program to include two new components. First, we have released a series of related funding announcements focused on technology development to improve the quality, capabilities, and efficiency of nucleic acid synthesis and synthetic constructs at decreased cost. Second, we have released a funding announcement for Coordinating Center to help integrate, accelerate our genomic technology development efforts. The Coordinating Center will be responsible for facilitating collaborations, sharing program advances, promoting standards, and managing an opportunity funds program. Applications for both of these initiatives are due on June 24th of this year. In addition to these new activities, HGRP continues to fund novel nucleic acid sequencing technology development work to decrease nucleic acid sequencing costs, develop nucleic acid sequencing methods, and increase throughput. Applications for these areas are due on June 26th, 2020. We also continue to fund nucleic acid sequencing technology and genomic technology through the NIH Parent Funding Announcements. The Phenotypes and Exposures Toolkit, or Phoenix, is a catalog of consensus protocols for measuring phenotypes and exposures in biomedical research. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NHGRI and the Phoenix team, led by Carol Hamilton at RTI International, have collaborated with a trans-NIH working group co-led by the National Institute of Aging and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research to create a catalog of available measurement protocols for COVID-19 research. The goal of this resource is to facilitate collaboration and data integration. Domains include COVID-19 symptoms, knowledge and attitudes, adherence to various mitigation behaviors, social impacts, and economic impacts. The Clinical Genome Resource, or ClinGen, evaluates and disseminates the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine and research. In January, the Unis County Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, or NICHD, issued a funding opportunity announcement to establish ClinGen expert panels for curating genes and genomic variants associated with diseases or conditions of high priority to NICHD's mission. Now, in addition to NICHD, the National Cancer Institute, or NCI, the National Eye Institute, or NEI, the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, or NINDS, have also signed on to this funding opportunity. Now, these expert curation panels will be required to utilize ClinGen curation frameworks and tools to determine the clinical significance of the selected genes and genomic variants. The final assertions and supporting evidence generated by each expert curation panel will be deposited into ClinVar, and there will be an annual application due dates, the first one being May 27 of this year. NHGRI has issued two new funding opportunity announcements for a polygenic risk score, or PRS diversity consortium. This consortium will study the known, poor PRS-based predictions of health and disease risk in non-European populations compared to European ancestry populations using existing data sets that are genetically diverse and have broad phenotype information. For the first funding opportunity, grantees will harmonize phenotypes, develop PRS methods, and collaboratively generate refined PRSs for populations of diverse ancestry and a range of complex diseases and traits. For the second funding opportunity, a coordinating center will be established for the consortium and will focus on data integration, methods development, analysis, and dissemination of PRS models and data to the broader scientific community. Applications for both funding opportunities are due on June 23 of this year. Now, the September 2019 Strategic Planning Workshop on Genomics in Medicine and Health recommended the engagement of patients, providers, and communities as partners in genomic medicine research. To address this recommendation, NHGRI offered a supplement opportunity for stakeholder engagement in genomic medicine research. These supplements will support partnerships between genomics researchers and relevant stakeholders, such as professional societies, payers, public health, and regulatory agencies, communities, patients, patient groups, primary care providers, and caregivers. The goal of these research partnerships is to enhance the translation of genomics and to improve clinical care and public health. The deadline for responding to the supplement opportunity was last week. The February 2020 report from this council's Training and Education Task Force recommended the expansion of opportunities for individuals to obtain training in genomics research. NHGRI has moved quickly to develop supplemental opportunities to fund research training for genetic counselors and data scientists. The task force also recommended the development of training modules and the training of healthcare providers in response to these recommendations. We are collaborating with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to provide support for the development of training modules in genomic medicine and the National Institute of Nursing Research for Genomics Training for nurses. The submission deadline for these supplemental opportunities has now passed. Of note, we plan to follow the short-term one-time funding opportunities with long-term programs to address the needs identified by the task force. Now, in order to manage the COVID-19 pandemic realities related to travel limitations, stay-at-home orders, and social distancing routines, many NHGRI and NIH meetings have been canceled or rescheduled and or held virtually. Since this was a shortened director's report, we decided to provide simple lists about the fate of various meetings. As you can see here, H3Africa, Anvil, UDN, Ignite, and the Genome Sequencing Program have all held virtual meetings over the last few months. Meanwhile, the Advanced Genomic Technology Development Program, CSER, and the GWAS catalog, and a combined Anvil with the Genome Sequencing Program will all hold virtual meetings over the next couple of months. The LC Virtual Forum will be held on June 15th and 16th of this year. This is going to be a free online event featuring keynote and plenary speakers as well as panel presentations over the course of two days. Registration is required by June 10th. Meanwhile, the Fifth LC Congress, which was originally scheduled for June of 2020, has now been rescheduled to March 22 to 24th of 2021. And lastly, both the GM-13 Genomics and Public Health and the curating the clinical genome meetings have been postponed, with the new dates to be determined. Moving on, then, to NIH Common Fund and other trans-NIH efforts, I'm just going to have one update here related to H3Africa. The central goal of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa or H3Africa program is to build a sustainable and collaborative African genomics research enterprise. Now perhaps not surprisingly, as COVID-19 continues to affect global populations, H3Africa investigators are guiding the response to the pandemic on the African continent. In March, H3Africa investigator Christian Happy and his team at the African Center of Excellence for Genomics and Infectious Diseases led the effort to sequence the first African SARS-CoV-2 genome in coordination with the Nigerian Centers for Disease Control and other Nigerian research organizations. In addition, Dr. Happy and his center have been tasked to sequence samples from all COVID-19 patients in the African Union for the duration of the pandemic. Several additional H3Africa investigators are now involved in larger roles related to the international domestic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as serving on presidential task force, providing guidance to their respective ministries of health and coordinating institutional responses to COVID-19. These investigators, such as those listed here, have been and will continue to be influential in guiding the response to the pandemic, as well as shaping the future research priorities in their respective countries. Moving then to NHGRI's Division of Policy, Communications and Education. For almost three years, NHGRI has been working in partnership with the Washington, D.C. local public broadcasting system affiliate, WETA, in support of developing the film, The Gene and Inimate History. The four-hour two-part documentary from Ken Burns and Rod Goodman aired on April 7th and April 14th and was adapted from the award-winning book of the same name by Sid Monkardji. The documentary wove together science history and personal stories in describing a historic biography of the human genome while exploring breakthroughs for diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases and the associated complex ethical questions. NHGRI was the major education and outreach partner associated with the film and assisted with the development of engaging educational animations, lesson plans, and a do-it-yourself or DIY version of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History NHGRI exhibition, Genome Unlocking Life's Code. Information about these resources can be found on the PBS Learning Media website and the National Museum of Natural History's DIY exhibition website. April 25th is National DNA Day and every year NHGRI hosts programs and offers educational resources to mark the occasion. This year, DNA Day was celebrated throughout April using virtual formats. A Twitter chat was held on April 9th highlighting genetic, genomic, and general STEM resources available to families celebrating DNA Day at home. Then on April 16th, NHGRI partnered with HRE African grantee Nikki Molder and her team to host a DNA Day virtual speaker exchange. Ayo Damate of NHGRI Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health and H3 Africa trainee George Daroka each presented the research findings to a global audience. Finally, on April 23rd, NHGRI's Genomics and Health Disparities Interest Group hosted a DNA Day 2020 virtual presentation by seminar speaker Janela Jeffs who spoke about using bioinformatics and podcasting to advance precision medicine initiatives in diverse populations. The Inter-Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education in Genomics or ISCCPEG aims to improve practitioner genomic literacy and enhance the practice of genomic medicine through the sharing of educational resources and identification of educational needs. Now ISCCPEG membership includes over 180 representatives from professional organizations and societies and NIH institutes and centers and industry as well as individuals with expertise in medical education. This year's in-person meeting was held back in February. This meeting included a keynote talk by council member Jeff Botkin and updates about funding opportunities for NHGRI extramural program staff. And finally moving on to NHGRI's intramural research program one but very notable highlight Bill Gaul senior investigator in NHGRI's medical genetics branch and founding director of the NIH undiagnosed diseases program was honored with the 2019 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Career Achievement Award. This award recognizes employees in the department with 10 or more years of service for their dedication and accomplishments. Bill was also recently featured in MIT technology review a very impressive achievement as well congratulations to Bill. And then before ending my brief or the unusual director's report I would like to as always put in a plug and say that anyone wishing to receive my monthly email update called the genomics landscape can simply go to the NHGRI website genome.gov and subscribe under email updates. And finally personal thanks to the many NHGRI staff members who contributed the slides and associated materials that I just reviewed in my director's report as always requires a group effort to put such a large amount of material together and to be able to convey it to council in each meeting. An additional thanks to our communications group and web team for making director's report an electronic resource and as always a special thanks to the ringleader for helping to prepare my director's report each time. Chris Watterstrand shown here on the top row second from left. And this is one of the many Zoom based virtual meetings we've held. This particular one was for the last ever meeting of the genome sequencing program. And with that I will stop and happily take any questions that you have. Rudy feel free to moderate any Q&A. Any questions for Eric about the director's report? Hearing none I think Rudy we can proceed with the open session agenda. Okay very good.