Jonathan Coddington: So good afternoon everyone.
My name’s Jonathan Coddington.
I’m the Associate Director for Science here at the National Museum of Natural History.
And I’d like to welcome everyone today to today’s symposium, Genomics and Our Health:
What Does the Future Hold?
Before we start, I’d like to give you a little context about the venue here today.
The museum’s history is essentially co-extensive with that of the Smithsonian -- founded in
1846, so about 170 years old.
And our mission is to understand the natural world and our place in it.
We have about -- a standing crop of about 400 PhD scientists here at any one time.
And we’re also stewards of the largest collection of natural history on earth, some 129 million
specimens.
We’re also the most visited natural history museum in the world, hosting annually about
8 million visitors -- the second most visited museum in the world.
If you’re curious, the Louvre is first [laughs].
And our scientists study anthropology, geology -- but the research focus relevant today is
biology, specifically genomics and human health.
Actually, the Smithsonian does quite a lot of genomics.
In fact, about the only thing we don’t do is human-oriented genomics.
We stay away from things like health and we study things like nematodes and worms and
bananas and sloths and nemertean worms.
So from species discovery to phylogeny through ecology, evolutionary, and conservation genomics,
it does research and outreach on essentially every major branch of genomics.
In fact, in a few weeks, we’re going to announce the new Smithsonian Institute for
Biodiversity Genomics.
And this museum has in fact opened the largest natural history repository -- biorepository
on earth -- that’s about 30 liquid nitrogen tanks and about 58 freezers -- in preparation
for a synoptic survey of all of life on earth -- not all species, but every major branch
of life on earth.
We would like to use our convening power to organize the extension of human genomics,
the power of that technology, and understanding the genomics of essentially the single genome
of life on earth.
We’re also leading our own effort, the Global Genome Initiative, to sample those things.
So today’s symposium is the crowning event in the last 16 months of public events that
NIH and NMNH have hosted in conjunction with our joint exhibit, Genome: Unlocking Life’s
Code.
This is a joint project of course between us.
And I’d like to gratefully acknowledge the -- all sponsors of the museum, particularly
Johnson & Johnson for sponsoring the exhibit and today’s symposium.
While the exhibit was here, it was seen by an astonishing 3.8 million people -- an extraordinary
number of lives we touched with the message for genomics.
It’s now on its tour as a traveling exhibit, and it opened last week at San Diego’s Reuben
H. Fleet Science Center, the start of many traveling venues in the USA and Canada.
So I won’t -- I’ll just -- before I introduce Seema, I would like to remind you that this
evening, we have a conversation with Carolyn Hax on human health, genetics, and disease.
And I’d also like to thank the panelists for their participation and in particular,
just at this moment, I’d like to ask all the people from NIH and from the Natural History
Museum and the Foundation for NIH that were involved in the design, content, and production
of the exhibit to stand for a moment of appreciation.
[applause]
Jonathan Coddington: It was a great job and I’m sorry that it
closed and left.
In fact, I think we should have kept it for another year.
But anyway, now I’d like to introduce Seema Kumar of Johnson & Johnson.
She’s the Vice President of Innovation, Global Health, and Policy Communication.
Seema.
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