 Okay. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this important National Human Genome Research Institute workshop. I'm Eric Green, Director of NHGRI, and I want to welcome all of you here. Thank you for being here, and thank you in advance for what's going to be a very important couple of days, both for NHGRI and also for the field of genomics. I want to start by apologizing to some of you, not that I had any control over it. I know there were some travel issues that came up with some storms in the U.S. I know some of you got in very late, or in some cases very early this morning. On the other hand, I can tell you the weather here is not bad for Bethesda, Washington, D.C. area for late July. Not nearly as horrible as it can be. Of course, we're not going to let you get outside very much, so you're not going to really be able to appreciate that weather. But truly, I do want to say thanks, and I want to say a few things about how appreciative I am, and the Institute is for all of you coming and helping us. I'll tell you, I've been Director of the Institute now for four and a half years, and I am consistently gratified to see how willing and responsive the community is to when we invite them to come help us and give us input. It is just remarkable, and it's particularly gratified considering we don't really treat you all that well, to be honest with you, with all the new government regulations. We don't feed you well or water you particularly well, and yet you seem to want to come to Bethesda, even in the middle of the summer. So really thanks genuinely for the kind of input that you routinely give us, and without it, I don't think NHGRI would be nearly as effective as they have been for many years. I also want to give a special thanks to our sequencing advisory panel, members of what many members of which, most members of which are here, who are deeply involved in the program that we're here to talk about on an ongoing basis. Also thanks to members of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, our council members. Again, many of them are here, and those who are not here actually are also quite engaged in this process. Some of you may be familiar with the fact that through our open session of our council meeting starting in February and then again in May, we began this process of taking an important look at our genome sequencing program in anticipation both of this workshop and also the activities that will take place and steps that will take place beyond this workshop that will very much involve both our sequencing advisors and our advisory council. I'll also say thanks to those who are joining by live video cast. We are being very open about this meeting. We want the community engaged in this planning process, and so we have a live video cast going, and those who can't watch it live will be able to watch it in video archive. All that will be made available on our Genome TV channel of YouTube. And finally, and to keep up with the social movements, if you will, we thank any of you who are going to be participating in our live Twitter feed. If you are interested, the hashtag is GSP future, and there will be Twitter feeds going on about this workshop for both days. So what I thought I would do to open this workshop is to really provide a context, and I really want to sort of bring you through several levels of context, sort of very general context first, then the relevant context, and then the very specific context. You'll see what I mean as I progress through my slides. I think the general context for this workshop is sort of deeply rooted in NHGRI's culture, and it relates to strategic planning. In fact, I could make the tongue-in-cheek comment that strategic planning is sort of in our DNA in some ways. And the reason for this, of course, is the origins of our institute and a field in some ways with the Human Genome Project, which were very much guided by both the process of strategic planning and also the products of that in very well-articulated published strategic plans. When the Genome Project ended, I think all of you are aware that the institute worked hard to put out a vision for Genomics Beyond the Genome Project, publishing this strategic vision in 2003, and then when that strategic vision needed updating, the process was repeated yet again and led to this strategic plan in 2011. This strategic plan is what I would describe as the relevant context for this workshop. This is NHGRI's current sort of strategic view of what needs to happen in genomics, from which we decide what we're going to be doing more specifically. It was published now several years ago, but I think it remains quite fresh and relevant, and I will tell you it is still used on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, for guiding essentially all the things being pursued by NHGRI. The centerpiece of the strategic plan in visual form is Figure 2, which is this iconic figure that really does provide an organizing framework for our programs, both our past programs, our present programs, and our future programs. I already know you will see this graphic again in at least one or two other speakers' talks, because again, I think even as speakers think about areas of our interest for NHGRI, they recognize to frame it within this organizing structure, if you will. I assume almost everybody here is familiar with this, along the top from left to right are sort of these research domains that progress from more basic oriented activities in genomics to more clinically oriented activities. And then down below are these hypothetical density plots that reflect, again, hypothetical accomplishments over different time intervals, starting with the human genome project and then immediately after the genome project, then the decade we're currently living in and then the decade beyond 2020. Focusing in on the current decade in particular, the reason why I think this provides very relevant context is to appreciate that what we're going to talk about with the genome sequencing program, both current and I predict future opportunities in genomics really very much touch on sort of all the areas represented across these five domains, although I can almost reduce them to three major areas that I like to think of it as. And you could see even in this decade and certainly beyond continued accomplishments in each of these areas. On the more basic genomic side of things, genome structure and function, thinking a lot about and being very productive in areas such as genomic variation, genome function, and of course the development and implementation and refinement of genomic technologies. In thinking more about the more middle domain related to genomics and disease, of course I call that discovery research and we'll hear a lot about the relevance of our current program and thinking going forward what NHGRI should be doing in the discovery realm, thinking about trying to elucidate the genomic basis for rare and common diseases, for cancer, for defining variants and their relevance to health and resistance to disease, for example, and also pharmacogenomics. The newest area, of course, for the Institute and for the field is the more clinically oriented domains I put under the framework of genomic medicine. Looking at real clinical utility and now, as we have done, starting programs to start to build a foundation that maybe doesn't show a whole lot of heat, if you will, this decade, but we certainly believe is building a foundation that will really provide hopefully a robust productivity in genomic medicine in the years to come. But I think each of these three areas, basic, discovery, genomic medicine are all relevant to what we're going to talk about in thinking about the current landscape, but also thinking about how to make sure we're highly productive in that future landscape. What we're really here to talk about now, focusing on the very specific context of this workshop and keeping in mind the general context of our strategic planning efforts and the relevant context of our current strategic plan is, of course, the specific aspects of our flagship program. And I would regard our genome sequencing program as NHGRI's flagship. And if you note, I even found a picture that had a little flag on the lead ship to specifically designate it, although it didn't have any DNA icons on it, although I looked for that but didn't find it. In any case, there's two things I want to now go through in describing what we are looking for from this workshop and to give you the context to help us get what we are looking for with respect to this flagship program, one, its history and two, its characteristics. So let's start, then, with the history. So I thought it would be very useful to go through and remind everybody what has been the history of our genome sequencing program over the years. And I'm going to put this sort of in a timeline, although it's not exactly precise the way it's measured, but you'll get the general idea. Now, of course, it's also important to recognize that the program over the years has changed quite a bit, as it should, because the science has changed and because the opportunities have changed. The origins of all of this, of course, was the Human Genome Project, when NHGRI was actually created to help lead the NIH's effort in the Human Genome Project, and I don't need to tell this audience the success of that endeavor or really what it accomplished. Near the end of the Human Genome Project, there was a flurry of post-human genome project planning efforts, not one discrete workshop, but a whole series of workshops that obviously led to many things, including the 2003 Strategic Plan. But among those flurry of planning activities came out an idea of how to move forward in the genome sequencing arena, and that led to the program then becoming the large-scale genome sequencing centers program from about 2003 to 2006. And there really were two major areas that were scientifically pursued at that time. One was in the arena of comparative genomics, and then one was the early days of studying human genomic variation, particularly that was the starting up and significant efforts in the HapMap project. Near the end of that funding period came one of these classic workshops, as we're having here, a program review workshop in 2005 that specifically looked at our large-scale genome sequencing centers. And in particular, we are very transparent about such things as we will be for this workshop. And if you want to go to our website, you even can find the executive summary from that workshop in 2005. And that is shown here. That led to a renewal of the program, which once again kept the name, large-scale genome sequencing centers. And that program ended up lasting from 2006 to 2011. It had a number of areas that I think very much also reflected as we brought in scientific projects reflected the way that we started to change making decisions about what we were going to pursue in these sequencing centers. So the way that we actually took input and decided on projects that also evolved with, again, new opportunities. For example, that's when some of the earliest cancer sequencing or cancer genomics sort of came to the fore with a tumor sequencing project, which later than resulted in implementation of the Cancer Genome Atlas, or TCGA program, which continues actually up to the present time. Medical sequencing was a major focus. Pathogens and vectors became a focus in looking in the microbial world. And then we started to also even go broader near the end of that funding period where you saw some of the earliest work in microbiome research and also came the launch of the next phase of genomic variation studies, the 1000 genomes. I would note that these last two areas in particular have carried forward even into the current round of centers. Of course, near the end of that came the need actually to once again look critically at the program. And in 2009, there was another one of these program review workshops. And in particular, I would note that in 2009, that particular workshop was actually held right here in this hotel. Actually, it was one floor down in the amphitheater that's located on the lower level. The efforts of that in 2009 was this report, which once again is available on NHGRI's website if you want to go back and look at the history there. Coming out of that 2009 workshop, this was eventually, although there was a slight delay, but there was eventually the program was reconstituted and that has now yielded what is the current four component genome sequencing program, which lasts basically through 2015 or so. And I would say that in particular what we learned from the 2009 workshop that led to the formulation of the current genome sequencing program, and notice the name changed slightly in the process now calling that this program, was a focus on diversifying what we were doing and in particular capitalizing on these exciting new sequencing technologies that really had become available. And we're really ready for implementation on a large scale. So what is the current program? Just as a reminder for those who might be familiar, it is four major components. The component that most resembled what had previously been our large-scale sequencing centers is this component consisting of three centers, our large-scale genome sequencing and analysis centers. We also, though, created a new program, the program Centers for Mendelian Genomics, three centers in particular, focusing on trying to elucidate the genomic basis for the remaining Mendelian disorders, for which we do not yet know the genomic basis. The third component is our clinical sequence and exploratory research program. I like to refer to a sort of taking out for a test drive genome sequencing in the clinic. And we have nine centers or nine groups that are focused on doing exactly that in a very exploratory way. And you'll be hearing more about that. And then we also heard at that 2009 workshop the need for enhancing or having the ability of disseminating the tools, software, bioinformatics, computational necessary for analyzing genomic data, and particularly those coming out of these new sequencing technologies. And that gave rise to this data science program called ICIC Tools, which has about eight groups who are funded to pursue development of software tools for dissemination to the broader research community. So this four component program, first of all, had sort of the continuation of microbiome research, to some extent, certainly continuation of 1,000 genomes. And TCGA is an example, but also then emphasized common diseases, especially the large centers. Mendelian diseases, the centers from Mendelian genomics, clinical genomics at our CSER program, and the development of computational tools, the ICIC Tools program specifically. Now over the course of history, these intervals of time, there have certainly been a changing number of funded centers over the years and funded grantees. In 2003 to 2006, there were about five centers. By 2006 to 2011, it was down to maybe three centers. But now, in the current iteration of our program, with the four component programs, there's three of one type, three of another, nine of one, and eight of the last one. So you can see the numbers very much change as we have gone to different time intervals and as we've diversified and changed the program. So where are we? Well, we are basically at this program review workshop in 2014, coming to the end of the current funding period. In essence, you are here. This is what we're here to do, is to help us figure out what to do going forward by taking stock of what we have now, being cognizant of our history, and then being very strategic in going forward. I was told I had to show this iconic graph because it's so much exemplifies, it actually wasn't in my original presentation. And I was told I would be remiss if I didn't show it because it is so much the key driver for some programmatic decisions we've made in the past and we will certainly make in the future. These costs have really plummeted, as all of you know. I don't even need to explain this graphic. But it also resulted in our changing the scale of the overall program. This has had major effect on that. During the Human Genome Project, at that very beginning of that timeline, the institute was investing on the order of $190 million into that sequencing program as it existed then. And by the end of the current funding period, it will have been reduced by almost two thirds or so. And yet, because of the outcome and the implications of this graphic, we certainly have been able to not only retain the scale in terms of data production, we've actually been able to grow substantially in terms of data production, even with substantially less money because of the obvious reductions in costs. And it's not just cost, of course, it's also the speed and many, many, many nuances associated as we've refined these technologies and deployed them in various settings that have led to the current opportunities as they exist. So the goal of this workshop, of course, is to figure out and to tell us your thoughts about how to move forward, help us define the areas and help us think about architecturally what this might look like. And that's all now to be determined. So that's the history and I think in some ways part of the charge. But now I wanna just go through some of the characteristics of this flagship program because I do think the characteristics have really guided it very much so far and I think we should really think about critically going forward which of these characteristics to retain and also which ones have served us well and others that may have served us not as well. So I sat down and I just made a list as somebody who has watched this over the years quite closely and certainly over the last four and a half years has thought about this a lot. What are sort of the characteristic features of this flagship genome sequencing program? And at least to date and I acknowledge it could change in the future. And I came up with seven characteristics. This is my packaging of it. People could come up with different numbers I suspect or different ways of describing this. First thing about this flagship program is that it's large and large defined mostly by scale. I think a key characteristic feature is this has scientific scale associated with what we can do. Second thing about it, it is very consortia oriented. This is not a bunch of people going off on their own and figuring out what they want to do. It is very much a highly integrated interactive consortium based science endeavor as it has been from the first day of the Human Genome Project in many ways. As a result of that and very much the way NHGRI likes to do business, it is highly managed. We establish in partnership with our advisors and also with members of the participants of this program what the goals are. I think we try to develop very clear goals and then we work very hard at achieving success. I think that has been a key characteristic of efforts like the Human Genome Project, 1,000 Genomes, Centers for Mendelian Genomics and so forth. Goals are very important and taken very seriously and we manage very energetically to try to attain those goals. Well, in addition to being large and consortium oriented and highly managed, we look to see what we're producing. We aim to produce resources of broad utility and things that are going to enhance the work of others. We look critically at the value of the data being generated and how it's being used to make sure that what we are generating is a useful resource. I think a key thing about our program has always been technology advancing aspects of it. I would contend that our genome sequencing program has been instrumental at helping to refine the sequencing technologies that are now in common use but are always rough off of that first version 1.0 and I think the groups collectively have always been very effective at helping to reduce to practice how these technologies really are gonna be used, not only at big operations but also at small operations, individual labs and so forth and I should pause and say that's not only just the technologies themselves, the hardware but also the data analysis and bioinformatics steps that are required and even the strategic approaches that are used for designing some of these programs, I think exemplars are the word that comes to mind for me. I think about tackling some of these big programs and showing the right way to do them is one of the things we look for in terms of technology advancing. At the same time, we expect this program to be scientifically and medically relevant. They can't just achieve a lot but not have it be important in terms of its relevance. We expect it in its discovery efforts to truly be addressing important scientific and medical questions and also serve as pilots for what's gonna come next and I could think of several examples where some of the earliest pilots that were tried in our flagship program later were scaled up considerably and became major programs because of the successes of those pilots. And finally, one of the things we like to I think we look for and expect is that the program be at least relatively nimble and be ready to seize opportunities when they come up from no matter where they come up from and there are many examples I could cite but I think this is a very important characteristic is that opportunities certainly now in biomedical research come up quickly and I think this program needs to be nimble to be able to address those. Okay, so those are seven characteristics as far as I'm concerned. Going forward though, what is NHGRI really looking for? What do we want? And I sort of listed a number of things here that I think we're looking for. For starters, I think we need to continue to be genomics trailblazers. I make no claim anymore. In fact, it's completely not true that NHGRI is the dominant footprint in genomics if you look at NIH. Genomics is everywhere at NIH and we have Institute and other NIH leadership actually attending this meeting because they have a significant interest in genomics and far more money is being spent in genomics at NIH outside of NHGRI than inside of NHGRI but I expect us to be genomics trailblazers. We should be doing this with respect to methods and data analysis and strategic approaches for using genomics to tackling some of the most vaccine and important problems. So we want to look to how our flagship can continue to blaze the trail of what needs to happen in genomics going forward. We also need to align with our strategic vision and our strategic plan and that's why I started with that is to set the context. I think whatever we decide is necessary, we very much expect it's gonna be in alignment with our current view of our strategic vision and plan. I also think that its overall or expected impact needs to correlate with program size. It is a big program. It should have a big impact if it's not having as impact as big as its size then we should think about what it should look like and maybe in a different configuration. So I do think we should be measuring impact or anticipating it. I think if we continue a major program of a flagship nature then I really do think it should retain maybe not precisely all seven characteristics exactly the way I articulate it but something like that. I don't think we're interested in throwing away those seven characteristics. I think it's something deeply rooted in the way we like to do business especially for these kinds of programs and I'd be very surprised if you can convince NHGRI not to pursue the kinds of things I outlined on the previous slide if we're gonna have a large flagship program. I think the other thing we need to also be recognizing is that I think it's very important for NHGRI to be able to move on past an initial catalytic role. So I think we wanna be trailblazers but after we've blazed that trail we can't stay there forever simply because other parts of NIH and other parts of the biomedical research community are gonna take it up and run with it as they should and part of it is because we aren't big enough and I'll get to that in a minute but I think we should feel very comfortable doing so and I list several examples here. Organismal sequencing was the rage right when the genome project ended but we don't do so much of that anymore. Lots of other people are doing that. The world of microbes and microbiome we were trailblazers at first but once it was very clear how to do this we saw a significant and impressive uptake by other NIH institutes where the questions being asked and the way these things were being applied were much more relevant to their research portfolios and the areas of disease research that they're studying and far more appropriate and in many cases because they were bigger and they could really devote the kind of resources that were necessary and I think a similar thing can certainly be said about cancer. We have been delighted by our collaborative partnership with the Cancer Institute and the Cancer Genome Atlas and we're certainly in discussions with the Cancer Institute about some possible follow on projects and we're exploring those but in thinking going forward what's going to likely happen in cancer genomics it needs the kind of significant investment that you'll see the National Cancer Institute pursue in it and I think what NHGRI's role in terms of really scaling up we should really wonder if that's the best use of our funds and I think as a result of it I think we'll likely see us playing a smaller role in the kinds of cancer research activities that we've been doing over the last few years looking for new opportunities perhaps in cancer where we could be more in the trailblazer again in partnership with the NCI. And that leads me to sort of the last thing that we are looking for which we are talking a lot about internally and we're talking a little bit as well with some of our advisors is are there ways that we could do more cost sharing to sort of broaden the impact of this? In other words, how can we continue to be catalytic and facilitative and be trailblazers but also not sort of the sole funders of this? And I think this deserves special mention going forward because I think there's some real opportunities here where I think we could even be more catalytic if we can set up programs appropriately from the beginning. So I thought I would just say a few more words about this notion of cost sharing. You know, simply put, for those who are mathematically inclined, I mean genomics is huge and NHGRI is small. It's just very simple. You know, our budget simply is not, you know, sort of in line with the kinds of projects one could imagine happening in genomics now especially with some of these new opportunities that one can envision with new technologies and new strategic approaches. So, you know, simply stated, you know, we cannot support everything genomics. It's just that simple. Now partnerships are gonna be key and it's not that we haven't done those. I've already listed some examples. We certainly have partnerships in cancer. We have partnerships in diabetes or partnerships in Alzheimer's. We have partnerships in autism and so forth. And there's others I'm not even naming. But I think going forward, we really wanna think about what those partnerships look like, especially as you get into more disease oriented and clinically oriented research endeavors. And one might consider, and we are considering whether we should have a more formal approach for cost sharing when we pursue large scale NHGRI funded genomics projects. And that cost sharing could be in various partners. It could certainly be with other NIH institutes and there's very good representation at this workshop of other NIH institutes here listening because they know we are interested in these kinds of things. But it could also be other funding agencies. It could be other countries. It could be private foundations. It could be companies. It could be all sorts of things. We wanna think more about what this is going to look like going forward. So those are the things I really wanted to say what we're looking for. So what's the purpose of this workshop? Well, I'll just give you a few things. For starters, well, it's just what we do. I mean, we just do strategic planning. Every time we have a hard problem, we'd like to get really smart people into a hotel conference room and just talk with them for two days. And that's sort of at a very simple level. It's what we do. But a more general, I actually think it's a very natural time for strategic input about our flagship area. It's been three years since our strategic plan came out, which means probably about four years since the last time we gathered like this. And so we just thought it was also incredibly important to get that kind of input. Not everything's changed in three years, but a lot has changed. And so it's useful to do this. And a more critical level, the purpose of this workshop is we need to strategize and really synchronize our thinking in light of what is a very rapidly changing and a very complicated landscape. And I think the subsequent speakers you're gonna hear from are gonna paint that landscape even more. It's incredibly exciting, but at the same time it's also it has many, many complications to deal with. And finally, the practical aspects of this workshop. In fiscal year 2016, we need to decide what we're gonna do with a flagship program. Or more importantly, we need to decide what we're gonna do with about $100 million. 25% of our extramural funds roughly are tied up in this, what is I currently described as our four component genome sequencing program. And that funding ends at the end of fiscal 2015 roughly. And so we need now to think about what we're gonna do fiscal year 2016, which may sound like it's far away, but it's not that far away when you have to put into motion the things that have to happen to think about what you're gonna do with this section of money, if you will, or this bolus of money associated with our extramural research program. I think there's other things to mention the purpose of the workshop. I mean, it has been five years since the last time we had a workshop that exclusively focused on genome sequencing program. So it's good that we're doing this again. And I also think that it is very important to have a workshop like this with this kind of important money on the table when things are fiscally very tough, and they are not any sign they're gonna get much better, but the same time scientifically things are incredibly exciting. And so I think this is why we do these kinds of workshops. Now, just to put a little more nuance on this, and I think this is stuff that Adam Felzenfeld who will follow me will expand on a little bit more. We want the highest priority to discussion to really focus on the research areas currently associated with these two parts of our program. In particular, what our large scale centers are doing now and what our centers from indelian genomics are doing now. And the reason for that is that these activities are absolutely the ones that the research areas, the ones that are really very much in play and thinking about going forward in 2016 and beyond. So we will make this our highest priority discussion. Now, but also important for discussion are these other two, the areas associated with our other two components. For reasons Adam will explain any renewal discussions around our CSER program is on a slightly different timeline. And then meanwhile, the bioinformatics tool development associated with iSeq tools, we are looking very carefully at how we're gonna move forward with that area of work in light of major developments in data science going on more broadly at NIH. Phil Bourne, I believe is here, I think I saw Phil coming sit in the front row who's a new associate director at NIH for data science specifically who is very much involved in deploying a NIH wide effort in data science that's well beyond genomics but very much encompasses genomic activities. And many of you have heard of the big data to knowledge initiative which is the first foray into this that Phil is now leading in his new position. And we can see some very good strategic alignments between the kinds of activities that iSeq tools is doing and what Phil Bourne and his operation is doing and what BD2K is doing. And so we are very much interested and continue to support this area and we want this input how it exactly gets organized and deployed in light of other NIH activities is to be determined. But again, to emphasize, we want input on all these things on a practical level, the things we will have to act on most aggressively are the areas covered by common diseases and rare diseases and other opportunities and areas that are mostly being pursued right now by the first two programs along the top. So finally, dealing with questions then to address among many questions let me just sort of list you some of the things we are specifically looking for. What are the grand opportunities appropriate for a flagship NHGRI program or programs? Grand opportunities. What is NHGRI not doing now that we should be doing? How do we balance the democratization, if you will, of genome sequencing with cheaper and cheaper technologies and the benefits of having a consortium-based large-scale pursuits, like I described with those seven areas that I think are highly associated with our current program? How do you properly tune a flagship program or programs, maybe we need more than one, funding level with its impact? What's the right balance to strike there? Especially in tight fiscal times. Should NHGRI develop a formal cost-sharing approach for large, non-generic, in other words, disease-specific projects? Along the lines of what I described in trying to broker more support for programs, having to be a cost-share model almost expected upfront in a very formal way. And finally, how should NHGRI more efficiently obtain commodity genome sequencing to meet programmatic needs? A lot of this is being commercialized and lots of discussion about whether we need to even be involved in running some of these things or should this just simply be many of these programs or some of it be outsourced to it at a commodity level? What are the pluses of that? What are the minuses? How do we sort of navigate those kinds of questions? So going forward, well, when I turn the podium over to Adam Felsenfeld, he's gonna be much more specific in describing to you the steps that are gonna come out of this workshop that we're gonna have to then pursue. I would just tell you we need to go forward quickly. The nature of the beast is that we have to go and really come up with some ideas and present them to our council in September. And we absolutely face tough decision. It's actually far more than decision. We've got a lot of decisions to make. And we are gonna have to face them very aggressively through August and early September. And that's why we hope that we're incredibly productive the next two days to really help us make those decisions and move quickly to deal with the steps that need to happen. I will tell you upfront that there are going to be too many good options. We know this. We know that what's happening now in biomedical research we would love to be able to do all the things one can envision. It's just not possible. And certainly it's not possible for NHGRI. And I think that's gonna be the pain point for us is recognizing that we've, the genomics community has created incredible opportunities but we can't pursue them all ourselves and we're gonna have to pick which of these that we're gonna be able to pursue. So that is what I want to tell you to set this context and let me just pause and is there any immediate question that I could answer? Otherwise, I will turn the podium over to Adam Felsenfeld. Okay, there'll be plenty of time for discussion in many, many different ways. So thank you for your attention. I hope this was helpful. I'm gonna turn the program over to Adam Felsenfeld who I think all of you know but Adam leads the genome sequencing program on behalf of a team that he leads in NHGRI's extramural research program. Adam. Can we ask questions? Yeah, you can. You can throw out a question and I'll change it over. So one curious thing which I'm listening to you. If you want to use your mic, we are video. I'm you and Bernie for the people who don't and I love asking questions if you don't know that. So one thing that goes through my head listening to this is where the boundary of the word genomics is. Is it sort of very strictly genome sequencing or is it everything that you do with a DNA sequencer or is it every large scale molecular data gathering technology that you can throw at a problem? So I can imagine at least those three definitions of genomics being possible definitions. Yeah, so let me, I won't precisely answer your question except to say that we actually talked a lot about even what to name this workshop because we don't want the discussion to be exclusively limited to genome sequencing. Okay, so, so, so, okay. But now let me test, so that means kind of chip seek and RNA seek and other funky stuff you do with a DNA sequencer. That's in. What about a proteomics and a high three per image screening facility? You know, it's, I think when you start to drift away from genomic technologies. Oh, DNA sequencing, yeah. Yeah, well, whether I've noticed I didn't say DNA sequencing, although you are, it is true that almost everything now the readout is gonna be DNA sequencing. I think if it very much, you know, I mean you in some ways actually, I think our strategic plan tries to delimit this a little by sort of saying that probably, especially at the scale we're operating at, you know, sort of drifting into imaging, drifting into proteomics, probably starts to go beyond what we should be doing. I mean, we'd listen, but I've gotta believe that especially for the scale of what we're dealing with, there's so much richness in the narrow definition of genomic technologies. Okay, last one in there, metabolomics because metabolomics does look like it's, you know, there's certain things that scale well with blood there. And so the scale argument would, I could imagine somebody making a scale argument around metaboloc, you know, I could do, one could imagine doing 100,000 blood syrup without kind of fainting. I think it would depend on what they're doing with it and how it would inform the genomic studies being done hand in hand. They're great questions and ones we absolutely think about. Is your time for one more question? Yeah, sure, one more. So, Manoli's scale is from MIT on the road. I mean, it's a little related. Basically, I'm noticing a dire absence of epigenomics in sort of the plan. And I'm just wondering if that's because you see it falling more in the various other institutes specific to diseases. I think, I mean, probably every time I said genomics, I could have said genomics slash epigenomics. It has the word genomics in it, I think it's in. Okay. I mean, even in the breakouts, I did not see. Basically, CERNI and CODE is doing a lot of sort of reference epigenome maps. But I think an aspect that's missing, that's sort of bridging the disease aspect and the sort of regulatory variation is how do these variants actually affect the epigenome across individuals. And I think, you know, that could be very informative in all of the programs that you mentioned, specifically the disease ones. Yeah, Manoli's. So first of all, I agree with you that that's very interesting and important science. I would like to ask you to flag that for some of the later discussions because I think this richness is exactly what's designed to come out. And some of these boundaries, as you heard, are not completely well defined. Are things that are gonna, I hope will come out in the breakout sessions and then be synthesized towards the end. Thank you.