The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is thrilled to announce the winners of the NIH Replication Prize. This prize competition was launched to recognize and reward progress in making important areas of biomedical research more replicable, and to encourage a culture change where replication activities are normalized as a standard part of the scientific process.
After a rigorous review by a multidisciplinary panel of judges, NIH has selected winners for Track 1: Replication Ideas, and winners for Track 2: Replication Exemplars. These outstanding individuals and teams have demonstrated exceptional commitment to scientific rigor, transparency, and the advancement of biomedical knowledge.
On May 13th, 2026, NIH held a virtual awards ceremony to celebrate the remarkable achievements of the NIH Replication Prize winners. The event officially announced all winners, showcased the innovative replication strategies developed by our Track 2 winners, and featured a keynote address by Dr. Tim Errington, a distinguished figure in research integrity.
The ceremony program of the ceremony is available online.
A video recording of the ceremony will be available soon.
Congratulations to all the winners for their vital contributions to the future of rigorous and replicable science!
Track 1: Replication Ideas Winners
Track 1 winners successfully identified high-impact areas of research that are in critical need of replication studies. Their submissions spanned up to five scientific categories: Basic, Translational, Pre-clinical, Clinical, and Social and Behavioral research. Each of the winners will receive a prize of up to $5,000 for their compelling research questions and strong rationales.
Kuan-lin Huang | Associate Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Winning idea: "The idea suggests that mandating the release of participant-level clinical endpoints and biomarkers from clinical trials would enable large-scale independent replication and accelerate reproducible biomedical discovery."
Alysson Muotri | Professor, UC San Diego
Winning idea: "Making human brain organoids more reproducible and consistent."
Scott A. Handley | Professor, Washington University School of Medicine
Winning idea: Dr. Handley identified that the landmark 1,800-citation pediatric Crohn's disease microbiome study documented five treatment exposures including antibiotics, biologics, steroids, immunosuppressants, and mesalamine but never tested their effects, representing a critical gap in understanding how therapies reshape the gut microbiome.
Vicki Meadows | Creative and Research Professional, Atlanta area
Winning idea: "My replication idea proposes a clear, multi-site re-test of time-restricted eating to see whether its widely claimed metabolic benefits hold up across diverse populations and rigorous protocols."
Max Zacher | Recent PhD graduate, University of Rochester
Winning idea: "My Replication Idea is to use epigenetic editing platforms as a tool to specifically isolate the role of epigenetic modifications in aging and cancer, disentangling correlation from causation."
Yi Jiang | Professor, Georgia State University
Winning idea: "We propose to independently replicate, across multiple sites, whether ATR-FTIR spectroscopy combined with low-complexity machine learning can reliably detect cancer biomarkers in patient samples."
Sarah F. Ackley | Assistant Professor, Brown University School of Public Health
Winning idea: "This project evaluates whether amyloid-plaque reduction can serve as a reliable surrogate endpoint for cognitive benefit in Alzheimer's trials — a question with enormous implications for drug approval standards."
Sterling Wright | Postdoctoral Scholar, Arizona State University
Winning idea: "My replication idea focuses on making oral microbiome research reproducible and robust through standardized, comprehensive multi-site protocols that ensure consistent sampling, sequencing, and analysis methods."
Rodrigo M. Carrillo-Larco | Assistant Professor, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Winning idea: "Establish an independent replication team to externally validate published risk prediction models across diverse populations, with a focus on cardiometabolic diseases in low- and middle-income countries."
T.J. Sego | Assistant Professor, University of Florida
Winning idea: "To assess the replicability of published epidemiological models, including stochastic models, by independently re-implementing and simulating them with standardized protocols and shared code."
Sean Mann | Senior Policy Analyst, RAND
Winning idea: "Replicate the ARRIVE trial to test whether elective labor induction worsens childbirth outcomes by increasing strain on hospital capacity — a mechanism that prior analyses overlooked."
John Worthley | Lead, Joliet, Nebraska Replication Hub
Winning idea: "Testing whether training trusted community figures (clergy, bankers, agricultural leaders) in evidence-based mental health protocols can effectively substitute for the clinical infrastructure that's missing in rural areas — essentially replicating urban intervention outcomes through social capital networks instead of traditional provider pathways."
Riccardo Barrile | Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati
Winning idea: "We aim to establish a standardized benchmark for blood-brain barrier function using an iPSc-derived organ-on-chip model that can be reliably reproduced across multiple laboratories."
Predictive/UNC Team | Alexander Tropsha · Eugene Muratov · Ricardo Scheufen Tieghi
Winning idea: Team Predictive/UNC leverages AI to build a ground-truth database of real-world human toxicity data for NAM validation. This replicability framework replaces unreliable animal testing in Developmental and Reproductive Toxicity (DART) with regulatory-ready, human-relevant alternatives.
LabGeeks | Nalan Yurtsever · Imran Unal
Winning idea: "This replication idea questions the validity of using HbA1c measurements for diagnosing diabetes across different laboratory platforms and patient populations, challenging a cornerstone of clinical practice."
MitoWay Therapeutics | Bin Jiang
Winning idea: "How can we make mitochondrial transfer reproducible so scientists can understand how it restores cell function and develop reliable new therapies?"
Functional Biomarkers in Food Allergy | Sindy K.Y. Tang · Stephen J. Galli · R. Sharon Chinthrajah
Winning idea: "This idea examines whether a functional blood test for food allergy can deliver consistent, reliable results in real-world clinical settings across multiple sites and patient populations."
UF HE LAB | Mei He · Zachary Greenberg · Brian Diaz · Samantha Ali
Winning idea: "AI-based ExoQuality index (EQI) to assess extracellular vesicles in high-quality and standardized fashion for yielding reliable, reproducible results across research and clinical settings."
Replicability by Default (RbD) | Michael White · Mosalam Ebrahimi · Berkan Hoke
Winning idea: "A systematic, multi-lab replication effort to determine whether the AI-driven animal behavior measurements now central to neuroscience research can produce consistent, reproducible results when applied across different laboratories and conditions."
Drs. Thompson and Henrich | Amanda J. Thompson · Christopher C. Henrich
Winning idea: "This project uses replication of mixture modeling to identify robust developmental trajectories of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors and their early predictors, advancing more precise early detection and prevention of youth suicide risk."
Track 2: Replication Exemplars Winners
Track 2 winners are pioneering researchers who have creatively and successfully integrated replication into their standard research practice. Their strategies have shown measured success in improving research rigor and building trust in scientific outcomes. Each of the winners will receive a prize of up to $50,000.
A video of Track 2 winners discussing their winning replication strategies and ideas will be available soon. These strategies will also be compiled and published as a publicly available reference on the NIH website this summer — a resource that we believe will have a lasting impact on the field.
John Worthley | Researcher
Magdalena Kasendra | R&D Director, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (CuSTOM)
Krissandra Johnson-Nealey | Site Operations Lead, Central Texas Clinical Research
Michele Di Mascio | Independent biomedical consultant (formerly NIH/NIAID)
Jagadeesh Ramasamy | Director of Bioscience Research, University of Illinois
Christina Kackos Brunelle | Senior Consultant, Deloitte
Team PGRM | Lisa Bastarache · Sarah Delozier · Anita Pandit · Jing He · Adam Lewis · Aubrey C. Annis · Jonathon LeFaive · Joshua C. Denny · Robert J. Carroll · Russ B. Altman · Jacob J. Hughey · Matthew Zawistowski · Josh F. Peterson
Antibody Team | Valérie Allamand · Jeffery Bajramovic · Hannah Cable · Pierre Cosson · Doris Lou Demy · Stefan Dübel · Mark Fowler · Katherine Groff · Michael Hust · Ravindran Kumaran · Jens Kurreck · Raphael Munoz Ruiz · Samera Rafiq · Ouarda Saib · Esther Wenzel · Kilian Zilkens
The RESI Team | Megan Jones · Kaidi Kang · Xinyu Zhang · Simon Vandekar
LATCH | Nayoon Gim · In Gim · Cecilia S. Lee, MD · Aaron Y. Lee, MD
ConductScience | Shuhan He, MD · Louise Corscadden, PhD · Boyu Peng, MS · Santosh Adhikari, MS · Yaning (Abby) Zheng, MS · Annelise Silva · Andres Diaz · Lauren Beaudin
ATCC Federal Solutions | Rebecca Bradford · Heather Couch · Sujatha Rashid · Ashley Castens · Manasi Tamhankar · Helen Navin · Michael Parker · Danielle Williams · Deb Hendrickson · Ann Wasko
Predictive/UNC Team | Alexander Tropsha · Eugene Muratov · Ricardo Scheufen Tieghi
C20D3-Vitamin A Replicate | Ilyas Washington · Leonide Saad
SOAR (Spatial Omics Analysis Replication) | Ka Yee Yeung-Rhee · Ling-Hong Hung · Bryce Fukuda · Cecilia Yeung · Kimberly Smythe · Jocelyn Wright
