The MIT School of Science and the MIT Libraries co-sponsored the inaugural MIT Prize for Open Data to highlight the value of open data at MIT and to encourage the next generation of researchers. The following winners and honorable mentions include members of the Media Lab community, and were selected from more than 70 nominees representing all five schools and several research centers across MIT.

Register for the Open Data @ MIT Event on October 28 (at 2pm ET in Hayden Library) to celebrate this year's prize winners. 

Winners

• Matthew Groh, who is part of the team behind Fitzpatrick 17k dataset, an open dataset consisting of 16,577 images of skin disease alongside skin disease and skin tone annotations.
• Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, who is part of the team behind Retos, an open-data platform for detailed documentation and sharing of local innovations from under-resourced settings, also aiding with matching hundreds of university students with challenges from rural collectives.
• Raechel Walker, Olivia Dias, Zeynep Yalcin, Lina Henriquez, Sophia Brady, and Cynthia Breazeal, who are part of the team behind Data Activism Curriculum for high school students through the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (Cambridge); activities involved using data science and open data to challenge power inequalities, such as racism, and students learned how to use data science to recognize, mitigate, and advocate for people that are disproportionately impacted by systemic inequality. 
  

Honorable Mentions

• Neil S. Gaikwad for Data-driven Humanitarian Mapping and Policymaking: a Global Initiative in Data Science Research for Planetary-Scale Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability, collaboration across academia, industry, governments, and communities. 
• J. Nathan Matias, who is on the team behind Bartleby, the Citizens and Technology (CAT) Lab at Cornell.