Grey Sloan Surgical Innovation Contest

The Grey Sloan Surgical Innovation Contest is a surgical research competition hosted by Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital anonymously funded by Jackson Avery. Contrary to the Harper Avery Award, the contest doesn't reward innovation but instead funds it. April Kepner serves as the Director of the contest.

Conception
Jackson came up with the idea after his boredom resulted in his challenging his male colleagues for little games when they were hanging out on his boat. After being confronted with Meredith's Harper Avery nomination, he realized he would never win that prize. In order to get in on the game, he decided to spent half of his newly inherited money, $125,000,000, on a new surgical innovation contest. He presented the idea to Bailey and asked her to set it up, since his name couldn't be anywhere near it.

Organization
Since she wanted to participate, she had Richard take over organizing the contest, but he soon passed it on to April Kepner for the very same reason. She happily took on the responsibility and came up with the rules. The surgeons were tasked with writing a proposal on their projects. 25 proposals would be chosen to receive $100,000 seed money. After phase 2, five projects will receive a million dollars, out of which one winner will be selected to receive 5 million dollars. April also assembled a panel of esteemed emeritus surgeons of Seattle hospitals to help her judge.

Participants and Projects
Several doctors teamed up for projects.

In the Running

 * Drs. Meredith Grey and Jo Wilson: Generation of functioning accessory livers in lymphatic tissue.
 * Drs. Arizona Robbins and Carina DeLuca: Maternal mortality.
 * Dr. Miranda Bailey: The Rectal Access Port for hydro colonoscopy.
 * Dr. Richard Webber: The Path Pen
 * Dr. Maggie Pierce: Transcutaneously rechargeable ventricular assist device.
 * Drs. Michelle Velez, Catherine Avery and Jackson Avery: A novel approach to vaginoplasty using laparoscopically harvested peritoneum.

Out of the Running

 * Drs. Alex Karev and Amelia Shepherd: MRI-guided ultrasound ablation of inoperable gliomas. (not selected for phase 2)

Notes and Trivia

 * The contest was open for surgeons from all over the country to apply.
 * Owen Hunt came up with an idea concerning clotting factor but decided not to participate when he was confronted with patents and writing proposals.
 * Jackson Avery was working on a project involving aerosolized stem cells that provide rapid tissue coverage and epidermal regeneration without any grafting, but he instead decided to join his mother and her friend's project on perfecting the vaginoplasty.