Stanford CTSA’s Research Rigor & Reproducibility Program (SPORR) hosts colloquium

Stanford CTSA’s Program on Research Rigor & Reproducibility (SPORR), hosted its 3rd school-wide colloquium on Rigor and Reproducibility on October 20th, 2025. 

The recent event featured insightful introductory remarks from Stanford President Jonathan Levin, School of Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor, and Ruth O’Hara, Senior Associate Dean of Research and principal investigator of the Spectrum CTSA. Due to the ongoing government shutdown, Dr. Steven Goodman, Director of SPORR, delivered a plenary talk on behalf of Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer, the Acting Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives at the NIH. Dr. Goodman’s presentation illuminated the NIH replication initiative and a variety of other prizes and initiatives (see SPORR website for links).

International Panel

Dr. O’Hara moderated a discussion among an international panel of experts comprised of Geeta Swamy (Duke University, US), who shared Duke’s experience with embedding a network of research quality representatives in every school department; Marcus Munafò (University of Bath, UK), who shared the activities of the UK Reproducibility Network; Tamarinde Haven (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) who shared insights on mentoring and promotion changes happening in the EU; and Daria Mochly-Rosen, Founder and Director of Stanford SPARK Global Program in Translational Research, who addressed researcher support services available at Stanford and practices used in industry to support reproducibility.

Stanford Speakers

The event also featured a talk by Stanford Professor John Ioannidis on meta-science findings and indicators of reproducibility relevant to institutional activities. In addition, attendees heard from Dr. Paul Nuyujukian, Assistant Professor in Neuroscience, who has developed a suite of data tools and workshops to improve the security and integrity of data pipelines, particularly for large data projects. 

Task Force Recommendations

A primary goal of the colloquium was to present and gather community feedback on draft recommendations of Dean Minor’s Task Force on Research Practice and Culture, charged with improving research productivity and reliability in the School of Medicine through wider adoption of rigor and reproducibility practices. Task force chair Steve Goodman presented preliminary findings from a range of projects examining School of Medicine research processes and outcomes, including a schoolwide data management survey still in progress. Dr. Goodman and Dr. O’Hara presented the draft proposal, which had a hub-and-spoke configuration: 1) Creation of a central hub to serve as a schoolwide source for education, support, monitoring, and reward activities related to rigor and reproducibility; 2) Creation of networks of data experts and research integrity representatives within labs, divisions and departments of the School of Medicine to identify needs and exemplars, and to devise solutions. Attendees provided input through collective discussion and electronic polling.

Awards

The event culminated with $1000 awards for notable accomplishments in rigor and reproducibility. The C. Glenn Begley Award was created this year jointly by SPORR and SPARK in honor of an exemplary clinician-scientist and Amgen research director, whose 2012 findings changed the reproducibility field and inspired large scale reproducibility projects. The inaugural award was given to post-doctoral scholar Sai Gourisankar for his rigorous approach to drug development for lymphoma. This was followed by three RaRe Researcher Awards (Rigor and Reproducibility); to Professor Sherri Rose’s Health Policy Data Science Lab for their creation of a detailed lab manual, lab analytic practices to assure reliability, and a new course in rigor and reproducibility for computational scientists;  to postdoctoral scholar Merve Kaptan, for her rigorous and field-changing methods in development of a deep-learning model for spinal cord imaging; and to Bioengineering  co-term student Matthew Lau, whose work contributed to the development $2 CRISPR kits to bring reproducible research to thousands of  high school students in the Bay Area.   

The event recording is available at the SPORR website.