June 16, 2011 | SAN DIEGO--Illumina named the winners in its first iDEA Challenge competition last night in San Diego. The competition rewarded excellence in data visualization and attracted 30 entries from both academic and commercial groups.
Six awards were given in three categories with one academic entry and one commercial entry winning in each category. Genome Ring from the University of Tubingen (Germany) and Partek won for Most Creative Algorithm and GenomeView from VIB (Flanders, Belgium) and Genomatix received Most Creative Visualization awards. Enlis Genomics received the commericial Overall award and a one-year co-marketing agreement with Illumina. inGAP from Pennsylvania State University won the Overall academic award and a $50,000 grant from Illumina to further develop the software.
Awards were chosen based on their promise to substantially improve the scientific utility of Illumina data, and overall awards specifically focused on integrated data and accessibility to all levels users.
Entries were evaluated by a panel of judges including Steven Jones (British Columbia Cancer Research Centre), John Quackenbush (Danan-Farber Cancer Institute), Steven Salzberg (University of Maryland), Gavin Sherlock (Stanford University), and Bang Wong (Broad Institute).
Thirty groups entereed the competition and 13 finalists were invited to San Diego to present their entries to the judges. Other finalists included Strand Life Sciences, ImmunoProfiles, Harvard University, University of Delaware, University of California San Diego, and University of Georgia. Each finalist gave a 20-minute presentation to the judges and the audience and answered questions over the course of the day and a half event. Keynote presentations were given by Bang Wong, Trey Ideker (UCSD), and Mike Correll (DFCI).
Entrants received a genomic dataset from Illumina including eight breast cancer genomes, though not all of the entries chose to use the dataset. That was ok with Scott Kahn, CIO. We wanted to start conversations around the challenges of genomic data visualization, he said. We were very pleased with the competition and the entries.