Researchers from WashU Medicine and the California Medical Innovations Institute (CALMI) have earned first place in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data Sharing Index (S-Index) Challenge, receiving a $400,000 prize for developing an innovative framework to recognize and reward high-quality biomedical data sharing.
The team developed Scholar Data, a simple and field-aware s-index for promoting and rewarding data sharing an approach that evaluates the quality, influence, and reuse of shared datasets while accounting for differences across scientific disciplines. The framework supports the NIH’s commitment to advancing open science and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data practices.
Aaron Y. Lee, MD, MSCI, Arthur W. Stickle Distinguished Professor and Chair of the WashU Medicine John F. Hardesty, MD Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, and Cecilia S. Lee, MD, MS, Jane Hardesty Poole Distinguished Professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Science, served as senior advisors and collaborators, helping shape the S-Index metric and the project’s overall strategy while working closely with Bhavesh Patel, PhD and the CALMI team, who led the framework’s development and implementation.
“Scientific progress depends on researchers building on one another’s work,” said Lee. “High-quality data sharing has the potential to accelerate discovery, improve reproducibility, and foster collaboration across institutions and disciplines. We hope this framework helps create meaningful incentives that encourage researchers to make their data more accessible and reusable. It was a privilege to work alongside Dr. Patel and the CALMI team.”
The national competition challenged researchers to rethink how scientific contributions are measured by creating a metric that recognizes the value of sharing research data. While traditional measures such as publication citations capture the impact of scientific papers, the S-Index is designed to acknowledge researchers whose shared datasets accelerate discovery, foster collaboration, and advance biomedical science.
The first-place recognition highlights the strength of cross-institutional collaboration in advancing biomedical informatics and open science. By bringing together expertise in clinical research, data science, and implementation, the team developed a scalable framework that could help reshape how data-sharing contributions are recognized across the scientific community.
The winning team included:
- Aaron Y. Lee, MD, MSCI, WashU Medicine
- Cecilia S. Lee, MD, MS, WashU Medicine
- Bhavesh Patel, PhD, California Medical Innovations Institute
- Sanjay Soundarajan, California Medical Innovations Institute
- James O’Neill, PhD, California Medical Innovations Institute
- Aydan Gasimova, PhD, California Medical Innovations Institute
The NIH S-Index Challenge was administered by the National Eye Institute as part of a broader NIH effort to encourage responsible data sharing and maximize the impact of publicly funded research. Winning solutions were evaluated on scientific rigor, feasibility, fairness across research disciplines, and their potential to encourage widespread adoption of open science practices.
The award highlights the value of collaboration across institutions and disciplines to advance biomedical research. By recognizing the impact of high-quality data sharing, the S-Index has the potential to encourage practices that accelerate scientific discovery and improve patient care.
About WashU Medicine
WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with 2,900 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 56% in the last seven years. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently within the top five in the country, with more than 1,900 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations and who are also the medical staffs of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals of BJC HealthCare. WashU Medicine has a storied history in MD/PhD training, recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.