Butterfly Effect

Institutional target shortlist

Concrete targets for the next Butterfly Effect outreach cycle.

This is a prioritized list of groups and organizations whose public research posture suggests a credible fit for the current data gap. The current execution lane is narrower than general partnership scouting: `raw nightly stress`, meaning participant-night longitudinal sleep, repeated stress, and raw or epoch cardiovascular signal with defensible linkage. The current benchmark is a dual frontier: `IFH Affect` for dense repeated burden and `HRV Sleep Diary 2025` for true nightly raw support.

Targeting logic

The main scientific bottleneck is no longer generic infrastructure. It is cross-cohort nightly transport. The shortlist therefore prioritizes groups likely to hold participant-night sleep data, repeated burden endpoints, and richer physiology or a credible prospective pilot route. The current internal repo is exhausted for this lane, and the open-only scout has not surfaced a clean direct-fit cohort.

P1: direct-fit cohorts P1: digital stress + wearables P2: prospective platform partners No open direct-fit cohort yet

Current raw-nightly gate

  • `>= 40` participants
  • median `>= 20` nights
  • aligned repeated burden rate `>= 0.30`
  • raw physiology on `>= 50%` of nights
  • mean raw coverage estimate known before transfer
  • `epoch` or `beat_to_beat` signal preferred over nightly-summary sidecars
  • linkage by `sleep_date_local` or `epoch_start_utc / epoch_end_utc`
  • pre-screen before transfer, not after
IFH: burden anchor HRV Sleep Diary: raw-support anchor Direct fit = both sides, not one

Current first wave

1. Brigham 2. Northwestern 3. Scripps 4. Stanford 5. Hospital Clínic Reserve: Duke

Lane A

Physiology-rich sleep and circadian programs

These are the strongest targets when the goal is a participant-night cohort that can directly stress-test nightly transport.

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Hospital sleep and circadian program with direct fit for physiology-rich nightly cohorts.

  • Priority: `P1`
  • Ask: participant-night sleep plus repeated burden and physiology subset
  • Official page

Stanford CSCS

Interdisciplinary sleep and circadian center spanning technology, clinical trials, and translational research.

  • Priority: `P1`
  • Ask: wearable-linked nightly datasets with repeated burden
  • Official page

Northwestern CSCB / Sleep Medicine

Unified basic, clinical, and translational sleep ecosystem with explicit collaboration routes.

  • Priority: `P1`
  • Ask: sleep phenotyping plus repeated burden and linked physiology
  • CSCB · Sleep Medicine

Hospital Clínic Barcelona

Multidisciplinary sleep research with biomarkers, sleep disorders, and new diagnostic tools including apps and AI.

  • Priority: `P1`
  • Ask: longitudinal sleep disorder cohort with burden outcomes and biomarker or PSG subset
  • Official page

Lane B

Digital trials and wearable-first cohorts

These are the best targets when repeated stress or wellbeing outcomes are already part of the study design and wearables are central.

Scripps Research — Digital Trials Center

Site-less digital research center with direct relevance to sleep, HR, activity, and repeated remote outcomes.

Duke DUPRI

Explicit field-based work combining EMA of daily stressors with commercial wearables capturing heart rate, skin temperature, movement, and sleep quality.

Lane C

Platform partners for prospective pilots

Use this lane if retrospective cohort access is slow and the project needs a prospective, instrumentation-controlled pilot instead.

Oura for Research

Strong fit for prospective wearable cohorts with nightly sleep timing and HRV.

  • Priority: `P2`
  • Ask: research collaboration or academic access path
  • Official page

Empatica

Best fit when raw physiology matters and a prospective monitoring pilot is acceptable.

Withings Health Solutions

Direct study-request path and home sleep hardware route for hospital-partnered pilots.

  • Priority: `P2`
  • Ask: prospective pilot with nightly sleep summaries and repeated burden outcomes
  • Official page