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Prize-based contests can provide solutions to computational biology problems

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 108–111 (2013)Cite this article

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Figure 1: Accuracy score plotted against speed of contest-commissioned immunoglobulin sequence annotation code.
Figure 2: Solution quality plotted against number of techniques.

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Acknowledgements

Harvard Business School's Division of Research and Faculty Development funded the prize money and supported K.R.L., E.L., C.B. and A.M. K.R.L. and K.J.B. were also supported by the NASA Tournament Lab, which is funded by the NASA Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. E.C.G. was supported by the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (NCRR 5UL1RR025758 and 5UL1RR025758-S), and R.A.A. was supported by the Klarman Family Foundation. P.-R.L. was supported by US National Defense Science and Engineeering and US National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Karim R Lakhani, Kevin J Boudreau, Ramy A Arnaout and Eva C Guinan: These authors contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Karim R Lakhani, Carliss Baldwin, Eric Lonstein & Alan MacCormack

  2. Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab, Institute for Quantitative Social Science,

    Karim R Lakhani & Kevin J Boudreau

  3. London Business School, London, UK

    Kevin J Boudreau

  4. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Po-Ru Loh

  5. TopCoder.com, Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA

    Lars Backstrom & Mike Lydon

  6. Department of Pathology and Division of Clinical Informatics, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Ramy A Arnaout

  7. Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Ramy A Arnaout & Eva C Guinan

  8. Department of Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Eva C Guinan

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  1. Karim R Lakhani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eva C Guinan.

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Competing interests

M.L. is employed by TopCoder.com. L.B. was a paid consultant to TopCoder.com at the time the contest was designed and executed.

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Lakhani, K., Boudreau, K., Loh, PR. et al. Prize-based contests can provide solutions to computational biology problems. Nat Biotechnol 31, 108–111 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2495

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