The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has partnered with London-based Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to launch a global science competition for new products to advance “open science,” a movement to make scientific research data broadly accessible to the public.
From the NIH news release:
The volume of digital information generated by biomedical research often called “big data” is growing at a rapidly increasing pace. Researchers’ ability to derive knowledge from data is hindered by their ability to find, access and use it. The goal of the Open Science Prize is to support the development and prototyping of services, tools and platforms to overcome these hurdles to ensure data can be used to advance discovery and spur innovation.
Up to six teams of technology experts and researchers stand to win $80,000 each to develop their ideas into a prototype or to advance an existing early stage prototype. The prototype judged to have the greatest potential to further open science will receive $230,000.
The first phase of the competition is accepting applications through Feb. 29, 2016. Six teams will be selected based on the advice of a panel of experts to receive the prize money to advance their ideas to prototypes, and will be required to submit their prototypes by Dec. 1, 2016. The overall winner is expected to be selected on Feb. 28, 2017.
Please see the Open Science Prize website for more information.
