University of Colorado’s Monica Munoz-Torres Leads Research Team to Win $50,000 FASEB DataWorks! Prize

Newswise—Rockville, Md.—Monica Munoz-Torres, PhD, Visiting Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at University of Colorado School of Medicine, on behalf of her research team, Monarch Initiative, received the FASEB DataWorks! Prize Distinguished Achievement Award.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the Office of Data Science Strategy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the award this week. The prize showcases research teams’ exemplary achievements in biological and biomedical research that were made possible through data sharing and reuse.

As inaugural winners of the DataWorks! Prize, Munoz-Torres’ research team received a $50,000 prize. The team’s winning project focused on reusing data to address the lack of interoperability in genotype/phenotype data in biomedicine. They will present their project and celebrate their achievement at an upcoming symposium on April 25.

Sharing and reusing scientific data openly has tremendous potential to catalyze new scientific discoveries. Exemplary data management and sharing requires innovative and interdisciplinary collaboration to maximize impact. 

The DataWorks! Prize, a component of FASEB DataWorks!, is a partnership between FASEB and NIH to incentivize innovative practices and increase community engagement around data sharing and reuse. A panel of NIH officials selected a total of 11 research teams as winners.

With community engagement as a key part of the DataWorks! Prize, FASEB recognized two teams with People’s Choice awards based on crowd voting. More than 2,150 votes were cast from the community.

2022 DataWorks! Prize Winners

Grand Prize: $100,000

• Team: BrainChart Project: Brain Charts for the Human Lifespan
• Team: National Covid Cohort Collaborative Project: Democratizing Access to Clinical Data

Distinguished Achievement Award: $50,000

• Team: PhysioNet Challenges Project: The PhysioNet Challenges Data Science Competitions
• Team: Monarch Initiative Project: Using All Organisms for Diagnostics and Discovery
• Team: NeuroMorpho.Org Project: A Public Repository of Neuronal and Glial Morphology
• Team: The GenomeArk Project: The GenomeArk: High-quality Reference Genomes

Exemplary Achievement Award: $25,000

• Team: Allen Institute for Brain Science Project: The Cell Type Knowledge Explorer

Significant Achievement Awards: $12,500

• Team: VEuPathDB Project: VEuPathDB: New Discoveries Through Data Reuse
• Team: Krishnan Lab Project: Removing Metadata Barriers to Promote Data Reuse
• Team: Vascular Model Repository Project: The Vascular Model Repository Open-data Model
• Team: MIT Critical Data Project: Improving Health Research Diversity with MIMIC (updated title)

People’s Choice Award

• Team: GenomeArk Project: The GenomeArk: High-quality Reference Genomes
• Team: VEuPathDB Project: VEuPathDB: New Discoveries Through Data Reuse

An annual challenge, the DataWorks! Prize is a component of FASEB DataWorks!, which brings the biological and biomedical research communities together to advance human health through data sharing and reuse. Learn more about FASEB DataWorks! and the DataWorks! Prize.

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About FASEB  

FASEB is comprised of 27 scientific member societies with 115,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. FASEB’s mission is to advance health and well-being by promoting research and education in biological and biomedical sciences through collaborative advocacy and service to member societies and their members. Visit faseb.org for more information. 

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