Catalyzing Biomedical Data Innovation: Three Years of the DataWorks! Prize

At the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS), our mission is to build a cutting-edge biomedical data ecosystem - one that is fully integrated and rooted in FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). In this post, I want to celebrate a program that has become a powerful engine for that mission: the DataWorks! Prize.

A Competition That Keeps Raising the Bar

Launched in partnership with the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the DataWorks! Prize recognizes researchers who demonstrate the real-world impact of good data management and sharing practices. Over three years, it has grown from honoring foundational data sharing into a dynamic competition spotlighting cutting-edge secondary analysis - and it is driving meaningful change across the research community. 

Here's a look at how the competition evolved.

Year 1: Foundational Data Sharing and Reuse (2022)

The inaugural competition set the stage by recognizing teams that demonstrated the transformative power of data sharing and high-quality data resources to advance human health. With 106 registered teams and 2,704 team members, the response was extraordinary.

Standout winners included the BrainChart team, whose work on human lifespan brain charts opened new frontiers in neuroscience, and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (now evolved into the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative), which broke down barriers to clinical data access at a critical moment in public health. This first year also helped align the research community with the then-upcoming NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy- building good habits from the ground up.

Year 2: Best Practice "Recipes" (2023)

39 teams and 220 researchers.

A highlight was the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19), recognized for its remarkable collaborative efforts in collecting and sharing critical patient data across institutions. The message was clear: great science isn't just about findings - it's about making those findings repeatable and reusable.

Year 3: Data Reuse from Generalist Repositories (2024)

The most recent competition raised the stakes further, focusing on innovative secondary analysis using data from generalist repositories participating in the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) program. The 2024 competition attracted 82 teams and 311 team members spanning biochemistry, clinical research, genomics, immunology, molecular biology, and neuroscience.

The Grand Prize went to Divergent Equilibria for their groundbreaking work on sex differences in Acute Kidney Injury — a compelling example of what's possible when high-quality shared data meets creative scientific inquiry.

Three Years, Over One Million Dollars, Countless Discoveries

Across its three years, the DataWorks! Prize has awarded over $1 million to teams exemplifying excellence in data science. But the impact goes beyond the prize money. Winning teams are invited to share their experiences at NIH forums, turning their work into blueprints for researchers around the world.

They are more than competition winners - they are champions of a new culture in biomedical research, one where data is treated as a shared resource and a springboard for discovery.

Thanks also to our partners in HeroX for administering the competition. For more information on the DataWorks! Prize and past winners, visit Data Science at NIH.

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