This is indeed a day of celebration after what I would say was a long taxi down the runway.

Usually it's about five minutes of taxi time from the runway to the gate when we're now allowing folks to use the phone.

I'm glad we're not losing them completely in California. Ed has tremendously high scientific standards, and his upbeat, 'can-do,' friendly personality is wonderful at getting people to work together on projects.

It will be the spring of 2007 before we will be able to pursue stem cell research on the scale that the voters of Prop. 71 expect.

This is an exciting moment for the CIRM as these awards mark the first step in our scientific program of stem cell research--an accomplishment we have been able to achieve in less than one year as a state agency. The CIRM training program established today will be the most comprehensive training program to date in the field, ... It will provide a pipeline of highly trained basic and clinical investigators for the research that CIRM will fund in California.

It's almost equivalent to doing nothing.