Rice teams rise to STAT Madness Round 2

Motorized molecules activated by light to kill cancer cells.

Vote again for Rice entries in national biomedical competition

Rice University’s two entries in this year’s STAT Madness were victorious in Round 1 of the  NCAA-style, single-elimination competition to choose the past year’s best university-based bioscience project.

That means it’s time to vote in Round 2. The round of 32 is underway, with voting open until midnight Thursday, March 8.

The lens-less FlatScope for fluorescent 3-D microscopy. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

In the first round, motorized molecules designed to kill cancer cells and developed in the lab of chemist James Tour defeated Harvard Medical School’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, and the lens-less FlatScope invented by engineers Ashok Veeraraghavan, Jacob Robinson and Richard Baraniuk topped Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, also associated with Harvard Medical School.

STAT, an online health and medicine publication associated with the Boston Globe, began the competition last year to celebrate biomedical science and remind readers that “tackling disease starts with small advances, often supported with federal funding,” according to a preview of this year’s event.

Two winners will be chosen: a “fan favorite” based on votes by the public, and an editor’s pick chosen by STAT journalists.

Vote here: https://www.statnews.com/feature/stat-madness/bracket/.