| June 4, 2013
A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, right? But can a healthy dose of rivalry actually solve major medical conundrums and, ultimately, spur innovation?
That’s the motivating idea behind a series of open-source, Big Data computational challenges hosted by Sage Bionetworks and DREAM (Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods) and an ever-increasing number of other companies looking to crowdsource the brightest minds in statistics, machine learning, and computational biology to develop better predictive models of disease. Though teams are pitted against each other in individual competitions, organizers say the challenges promote the kind of collaboration necessary to solve massive biological quandaries.