Voting begins today for the 2016 edition of October Madness, a public Nobel Prize prediction contest from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.
Please click the links below to vote for who you think could win this year's Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. We're also voting for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences.
Voting for this round ends at midnight PDT on September 5, 2016. We will announce the researchers moving on to the Elite 8 round on September 7. Weekly voting will continue until we announce our most popular choices for this year's Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences on September 27.
Thank you to everyone who submitted nominations. Let's start voting!
Chemistry
Vote here for your predictions for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The October Madness Chemistry Sweet 16 match-ups are:
1.
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for the CRISPR gene editing tool
VS
Louis E. Brus for his discoveries in semiconductor nanocrystals
2.
Alec Jeffreys for his work on variation and mutation in the human genome
VS.
Jerrold Meinwald for his pioneering work leading to the establishment of the field of chemical ecology and his fundamental studies of how chemicals act as repellents and attractants between organisms, leading to the use of these chemicals in variety of biomedical, agricultural, forestry, and household applications
3.
Howard Morris for improving our understanding of living systems at the molecular level by pioneering work in biomolecular mass spectrometry
VS.
Michael Grätzel for discovering dye sensitized solar cells, a new type of solar cell for powering portable electronic devices with applications for building integrated photovoltaics
4.
Andrew Holmes for his contributions to chemical synthesis at the interface between materials and biology and pioneering the field of organic electronic materials
VS.
Martin Stahl for his impact on the field of drug discovery with novel contributions that are used routinely to develop new medicines
5.
Steven Ley for his research in organic chemistry and contributions to the methodology of synthesis
VS.
Kim Lewis for the discovery of Teixobactin, the first antibiotic in 30 years
6.
Marvin H. Caruthers for contributions to the chemical synthesis of DNA and RNA that made it possible to decode and encode genes and genomes
VS.
Tobin J. Marks for contributions to understand catalysts, useful in the production of environmentally-friendly plastics and new materials
7.
Bruce D. Roth for he discovery, synthesis, and commercial development of the cholesterol-lowering medicine atorvastatin (Lipitor)
VS.
Paul J. Reider for the discovery and development of approved drugs, including those for treating asthma and for treating AIDS
8.
Harry Gray, Stephen Lippard, Richard Holm for work in bioinorganic chemistry
VS.
A. Paul Alivisatos, Chad A. Mirkin, and Nadrian C. Seeman for contributions to DNA nanotechnology
Economic Sciences
Vote here for your predictions for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences
The October Madness Economic Sciences Sweet 16 match-ups are:
1.
Jennifer Hunt for analysis on immigration
VS.
Gene Grossman for work on the political economy of trade policy, using the environmental Kuznet’s curve to better understand the relationship between economic development and environmental quality
2.
Orley Ashenfelter for analysis on labor economics
VS.
Jordi Gali for advances in New Keynesian macroeconomic modeling that indicate the relationship between inflation stabilization and output gap stabilization is more complex than previously understood
3.
Daniel Hamermesh for his contributions to the study of labor demand
VS.
John A. List for innovations in field experiments that have resulted in breakthrough analyses of microeconomic behavior
4.
Gary S. Fields for contributions on the importance of efficient labor markets to fight poverty and foster economic development in low- and middle-income countries
VS.
Charles F. Manski for work in prediction, judgment, and decision, including identification of discrete choice models and identification of social interactions, and how they connect to policy outcomes
5.
Richard Blundell for his important contributions to labor economics, public finance and applied econometrics
VS.
Lawrence Summers for his important contributions in many areas of economics, primarily public finance, labor economics, financial economics, and macroeconomics
6.
Roland Fryer for groundbreaking quantitative analysis techniques that reveal causes and effects of economic and educational gaps based on racial discrimination and other inequities
VS.
Thomas Piketty for work on wealth and income inequality
7.
Esther Duflo for advances in applied economics through innovative field studies that examine how public policy affects microeconomic outcomes in developing nations
VS.
Ernst Fehr for pioneering research on the role of fairness in markets, organizations, and in individual decisions
8.
Xavier Gabaix for insights into connections between behavior and macroeconomics, leading to breakthrough analysis on discerning the true economic effects of low interest rates
VS.
Jonathan Gruber for work in crafting public health policy
Physics
Vote here for your predictions for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The October Madness Physics Sweet 16 match-ups are:
1.
Vera Rubin and Kent Ford for dark matter
VS.
Paul B. Corkum and Ferenc Krausz for pioneering attophysics, which uses lasers to detect molecular phenomena in a quintillionth of a second
2.
Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking for their contribution to our understanding of the universe
VS.
Herbert Spohn for his seminal contributions to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics as exemplified by his exact solutions of growth models and stationary states of open systems
3.
Charles L. Bennett for mapping the cosmic microwave background and helping us learn about our universe
VS.
Michio Jimbo and Tetsuji Miwa for developments in integrable systems and their correlation functions in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory, making use of quantum groups, algebraic analysis and deformation theory
4.
William Borucki for leadership of NASA's Kepler mission, which uncovered planets and solar systems
VS.
Alexander Polyakov for his discoveries in field theory and string theory
5.
Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ronald Drever for the direct detection of gravitational waves
VS.
Zhong Lin Wang for the invention of nanogenerators, a self-sufficient power source that can harvest energy from the human body or environment
6.
Alexander Dalgarno for his contributions to the development of the field of molecular astrophysics, which led to a better understanding of interstellar space and the formation of stars and planets
VS.
Harald Rose, Knut Urban, and Maximilian Haider for their development of abberation-corrected electron microscopy, allowing the observation of individual atoms with picometer precision
7.
Sandra M. Faber for leadership in numerous path-breaking studies of extra-galactic astronomy and galaxy formation
VS.
Yosef Imry for pioneering studies of the physics of mesoscopic and random systems
8.
Deborah Jin for pioneering investigations of the quantum properties of an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms, and for the creation of the first quantized gas of fermionic atoms
VS.
John Pendry for his seminal contributions to surface science, disordered systems, and photonics
Physiology or Medicine
Vote here for your predictions for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The October Madness Physiology or Medicine match-ups are:
1.
Craig Venter, Francis Collins, Eric Lander for the human genome sequence
VS.
Seiji Ogawa for the discovery of the principle for functional magnetic resonance imaging
2.
Jaques Francis Albert Pierre Miller for work on the immunological function of the thymus and of T cells, which has revolutionized the science of immunology
VS.
Akira Endo for the discovery of statins and their development
3.
Peter Wells for pioneering the development of ultrasonics as a diagnostic and surgical tool
VS.
Tadamitsu Kishimoto and Toshio Hirano for the discovery of interleukin-6 and its application in treating diseases
4.
Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter for identifying key components of the unfolded protein response
VS.
Theodore Friedmann and Alain Fischer for the proposal of gene therapy and its clinical applications
5.
Richard H. Scheller and Thomas C. Südhof for their discoveries in rapid neurotransmitted release
VS.
Matthias Gromeier and Gordana Vlahovic for using a genetically engineered polio virus (PVS-RIPO) to attack glioblastoma, a brain cancer, and discovering that it seeks out and attaches to receptors that are highly common across tumor types, while leaving normal cells alone
6.
Napoleone Ferrara for the discovery of vascular endothelial growth factor and devising an effective treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration
VS.
Graeme Clark, Ingebord Hochmair, and Blake Wilson for developing the modern cochlear implant
7.
Maurice Samuel Devaraj for the discovery of a method of suppressing mutations in pathogens such as tuberculosis
VS.
Brian Drucker, Nicholas Lydon, and Charles Sawyers for the development of novel treatments for chronic myelogenous leukemia
8.
Anthony S. Fauci for work on dissecting the mechanisms of pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that has served as the underpinning for strategies for the treatment of HIV
VS.
Paul Quinton for significant contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms behind cystic fibrosis, particularly the discovery that the fundamental defect in cystic fibrosis is chloride impermeability
Heather Thorstensen is the manager of communications for Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.