The 64 contestants whose discoveries and innovations have been selected for the 2024 edition of STAT Madness come from 50 institutions across the U.S. The teams include a Nobel laureate (Jennifer Doudna) and biotech big shots (Robert Langer and David Liu), but also up-and-comers.
STAT Madness is our annual bracket-style competition in which readers vote on the most important and impactful biomedical and health research published in the past year by scientists at universities and independent labs. The tournament launches March 1, and after six rounds of voting, the winner will be announced April 5.
The entries reflect the broad range of scientific inquiry. They include the comprehensive mapping of the mouse brain, the first time this has been done with a mammal, and large-scale genomics investigations that found genes conserved across 240 mammalian species and new antibiotic candidates in the genomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
They include clinical trials of new cancer therapies, advances in developing treatments for fragile X syndrome, the leading inherited cause of intellectual disabilities, new approaches to delivering gene therapies to hard-to-reach organs, and growing a mini-ovary in a dish.
Bioengineers’ prototypes of new medical gadgets are also featured — among them ingestible devices to combat obesity and eating disorders and 3D printing inside the body — as is research that revealed hospitals widely share potentially sensitive website visitor data with big tech companies, and that linked contaminated meat to patients hospitalized with urinary tract infections.
Cancer research accounts for 15 of the entries, and nine focus on infectious diseases, but only three involve Covid-19 — a sign of the U.S. research enterprise’s return to its pre-pandemic priorities. In comparison, STAT Madness 2021 had 15 Covid-related entries.
STAT Madness is based on college basketball’s March Madness tournaments, but the goal is larger than simply crowning a champion. By scanning through the entries, readers will gain an appreciation for the scope and ingenuity of biomedical research being pursued around the U.S.
Last year’s popular vote winner was the NYU College of Dentistry, for developing a gel to treat gum disease.
Follow this year’s competition on your favorite social media platforms using the hashtag #STATMadness.
Here are the teams selected for STAT Madness 2024. (There are fewer than 64 teams because some institutions have more than one entry, and some are combined entries.)
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Allen Institute
Baylor College of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Duke University
BWH / West Virginia University
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
CHOP / NICHD
Frankel Cardiovascular Center – University of Michigan
Gladstone Institutes
Indiana University
Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation – University of Michigan
Institute for Systems Biology
Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Group / UC San Diego
Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT / UMass Chan Medical School
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
MSKCC / Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York University
NYU Tandon School of Engineering / MIT
Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan
Northeastern University
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Rogel Cancer Center – University of Michigan
Salk Institute
Stanford University
The George Washington University
GW / Northwestern University
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
UMass Chan Medical School
University Hospitals / Case Western Reserve University
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of Chicago Medicine
University of Iowa
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh / Carnegie Mellon University
University of Rochester Medical Center
University of Utah Health
UVA Health
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Weill Cornell Medicine
Whitehead Institute
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University