As a part of the NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge Series, the 2014 Asteroid Tracker Challenge attempted to optimize the use of an array of radar dishes when tracking Near Earth Objects (NEO) from the time they become visible over the horizon until the point at which they cease... Read more about Asteroid Tracker Challenge

The goal of this 2013 NASA challenge conducted on Topcoder was to optimize the position of solar collectors on the International Space Station to generate as much power as possible during the most difficult orbital configurations.... Read more about International Space Station Longeron Shadowing Challenge

This 2014 Planetary Data System NASA challenge asked competitors to help find anomalies and features of interest in the rings of Saturn that are not otherwise detectable by computer due to false-positives. The Cassini spacecraft took images during the orbit of Saturn. Competitors were... Read more about Cassini Images Challenge

This 2013 challenge was developed in partnership with NASA; University of California, San Diego; and National Geographic. Conducted on Topcoder with a $15,000 prize purse, this machine learning contest asked competitors to develop an algorithm that learns from... Read more about Collective Minds and Machines Exploration Challenge

Conducted on Tongal, this 2012 NASA competition asked participants to submit ideas, pitches, and video content to create a 60-second video on the Venus Transit.  The winning video combines provided footage of the 2012 Venus Transit with original footage... Read more about 2012 Venus Transit Video Time Capsule Challenge

Participants in this 2012 NASA contest through the Tongal platform were tasked to submit ideas, pitches, and create videos for the Zero Robotics program, which invites students to compete in robotics competitions through NASA. Results can... Read more about Zero Robotics Video Challenge

The Broad Institute's Connectivity Map is a collection of genome-wide, transcriptional expression data from cultured human cells. The data is used to find the functional connections between drugs, genes, and diseases through the transitory feature of common... Read more about Connectivity Map 1

The Broad Institute's Connectivity Map is a collection of genome-wide, transcriptional expression data from cultured human cells. The data is used to find the functional connections between drugs, genes, and diseases through the transitory feature of common... Read more about Connectivity Map 2

The goal of this 2013 precision medicine challenge, conducted with Harvard Medical School on Topcoder, was to find a faster, more accurate solution to calculate the edit distance between a query DNA string and the original DNA string. Prior to the contest, the best-known solution,... Read more about Antibody Sequencing Algorithm Challenge

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Successful treatment depends on a radiation oncologist’s ability to accurately measure the tumor’s shape and responsiveness to interventions. Furthermore, manual delineation of... Read more about Lung Cancer Tumor Characterization Image Recognition Algorithm & System

Working with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, this project aims to collect and analyze oral histories and memories of the 1947 Partition of British India with a focus on minority voices. Aspects of this project include gathering discrete historical data such as locations and descriptions of refugee camps; mapping geographical locations... Read more about Crowdsourcing Memories from the 1947 Partition of British India

A joint project with Harvard Catalyst — Reactor, this initiative aims to pair patient- and caregiver-derived solutions with research labs at Boston-area medical schools to develop innovative tools to benefit the patients, their disease communities, and others with similar needs.... Read more about Developing a Process to Foster Co-creation by Patients and Caretakers and our Research Communities

LISH researchers are designing experiments wrapped around NYU GovLab’s City Challenges. The City Challenges program aims to use competitions and coaching to solve urban problems. See here for information on a prior challenge.