Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus have received a $5.1 million grant from the National Institute of Health’s Autism Data Science Initiative, which aims to improve reliability and public trust in autism research, according to the Cornell Chronicle. The funding will establish the Autism Replication, Validation, and Reproducibility — or AR2 — Center, which will serve as a quality-control hub for ADSI projects, helping ensure that findings across the initiative are accurate and verifiable.
The center will be led by Dr. Judy Zhong, chief of the Division of Biostatistics and director of the Data Coordinating Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, alongside Dr. Rainu Kaushal, senior associate dean of health data science, and Dr. Conor Liston, professor of neuroscience and psychiatry.
AR² is one of 13 projects funded through ADSI’s $50 million national effort to better understand the biological and environmental factors involved in autism, according to the Chronicle. The new center will use existing data from previous studies, Medicaid claims and major research repositories — including the INSIGHT Clinical Research Network and PCORnet — to evaluate the consistency and generalizability of results generated by other ADSI teams.
To strengthen the credibility of their research, the team plans to reanalyze data from ADSI studies, confirm that models perform reliably across different patient populations and make their methods openly available so other scientists can reproduce the results.
A community advisory board composed of researchers, policymakers and parents of children with autism will meet with AR² leadership every six months to guide project priorities and ensure the center’s work reflects the needs of patients and their families.
The center will also partner closely with the Cornell Center for Social Sciences in Ithaca, which provides expertise in replication and advanced data management. CCSS will help reproduce ADSI project results, facilitate data sharing and host training workshops to promote best practices in reproducible research.
The replication efforts will be led by Florio Arguillas, a research associate at CCSS, who will also train students to assist with data validation and analysis, helping prepare the next generation of scientists to uphold rigorous research standards.
AR² will further benefit from the resources of the Data Coordinating Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, which supports large-scale clinical trials and real-world data studies across academia, government and industry.
The three-year project is expected to lay the groundwork for long-term improvements in scientific transparency and reproducibility. The cross-campus collaboration, researchers say, represents a model for future initiatives that seek to build public confidence in scientific discovery.
Marissa Gaut is a member of the class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is the Science & Technology editor on the 143rd Editorial Board. You can reach her at mgaut@cornellsun.com.
