Texas Heart/Rice advance to the quarterfinals for the title of best innovation in biomedicine

The Texas Heart Institute (THI) and Rice University’s innovative discovery for the heart moved up to the final 8 in the national STAT Madness competition. The NCAA-style, single-elimination competition, now in its fourth year, will soon crown the past year’s best bioscience project.
The research team, co-led by Director of Electrophysiology Clinical Research and Innovations, Dr. Mehdi Razavi and Matteo Pasquali, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry at Rice, is competing with research partially funded by the American Heart Association through aÂ 2015 grant.

The scientific paper at the heart of the competition, was published as an open-access Editor’s Pick in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology as an open-access Editor’s Pick in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.

The competition began with 64 talented teams. The THI/Rice team won three tough elimination round matchups against Penn Medicine, the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. They are now matched up to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, for the chance to compete in the semifinal round the Final 4.

On April 6, two winners will be chosen: a fan favorite based on votes by the public, and an editor’s pick chosen by STAT journalists.
Online voting is open until March 26 at 10:59. The team needs to win the popular vote in Round 4 to stay in this friendly competition and advance to the semifinals.