Website Terms of Use

1. Purpose

The Services support The Virtual Embryo Challenge, including participant registration, dataset distribution, submissions, evaluation, leaderboards, documentation, tutorials, and community discussions.

Participation in the competition is also subject to the Virtual Embryo Challenge Official Rules, which form part of these Terms.

2. Eligibility and Accounts

You must:

• Provide accurate registration information.
• Keep your account credentials secure.
• Use only one account unless explicitly authorized.
• Be responsible for all activities under your account.

If participating on behalf of an organization, you confirm that you are authorized to bind that organization to these Terms.

3. Competition Submissions

By submitting predictions, code, reports, or other materials through the Services, you:

• Confirm that you own or have permission to submit them.
• Grant the organizers a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, evaluate, reproduce, and display your submissions solely for administering the competition, validating results, publishing leaderboards, scientific reporting, and promoting the Challenge.
• Retain ownership of your intellectual property unless otherwise stated in the Official Rules.

4. Community Content

If you post comments, questions, or other materials on discussion forums or community features, you grant the organizers permission to display and use that content in connection with operating the Challenge.

Please do not post unlawful, offensive, abusive, or confidential information.

5. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Share or sell your account.
• Submit fraudulent or plagiarized work.
• Attempt to manipulate the leaderboard or evaluation system.
• Reverse engineer, disrupt, or attack the Services.
• Upload malicious software or harmful content.
• Violate applicable laws or the Official Rules.
• Misuse released datasets or participant information.

Violation of these Terms may result in suspension, disqualification, or account termination.

6. Evaluation and Enforcement

The organizers may audit submissions, verify compliance with the Official Rules, investigate suspected misconduct, and remove or disqualify submissions that violate these Terms or compromise the integrity of the competition.

7. Intellectual Property

All website content, datasets, documentation, software, graphics, logos, and trademarks remain the property of the organizers or their licensors unless otherwise stated.

Participants may use released competition materials only for purposes permitted by the Challenge.

8. Privacy

Personal information will be handled in accordance with the Challenge Privacy Policy.

9. Disclaimer

The Services are provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. We do not guarantee uninterrupted operation, accuracy, availability, or fitness for any particular purpose.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the organizers and affiliated institutions shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising from participation in the Challenge or use of the Services.

11. Changes

We may update these Terms, the Services, or the competition procedures at any time. Continued use of the Services after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

12. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

13. Contact

Questions regarding the Challenge or these Terms may be directed to the Virtual Embryo Challenge Organizing Committee.

14. Research Use and Scientific Integrity

Participants agree that:

• Competition datasets are provided for research and educational purposes. Any use, reuse, publication, presentation, or redistribution of the data outside the Challenge must appropriately acknowledge the Virtual Embryo Challenge and credit Dr. Neil Chi’s group at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which generated the dataset. As the dataset has not yet been published, any use of the data in a publication or public presentation must receive prior approval from Dr. Neil Chi and the data-generating team. Any publication using the dataset must also appropriately credit Dr. Qingquan Zhang and Dr. Neil Chi.
• Attempts to recover hidden test labels, exploit evaluation infrastructure, or otherwise circumvent fair evaluation are prohibited.
• Winning teams may be asked to provide sufficient documentation or code to verify reproducibility before prizes are awarded.
• The organizers may publish aggregate benchmark results, leaderboards, and technical summaries describing submitted methods while respecting participants’ intellectual property as described in the Official Rules.