BioHackathon Europe

BioHackathon Europe is an annual event that brings together bioinformaticians and computational biologists from around the world. It’s organised by ELIXIR Europe, and offers an intense week of hacking, with participants working on diverse and exciting projects. BioHackathon is a community-driven event, which provides an opportunity for members of the life sciences community to meet and work together on topics of common interest. The goal is to create code that addresses challenges in bioinformatics research.

This year we are holding the BioHackathon at Hotel Esplanade Resort in Berlin, Germany from 3 to 7 November (see the Venue page), with remote access available if you cannot attend in person. Registration will open in June 2025 – the exact date will be confirmed before then.

Scope

The BioHackathon provides space for collaboration and innovation in computational biology and bioinformatics. Participants engage in intensive, hands-on programming and content-creation activities, data integration and software development. The topics are aligned with the needs of ELIXIR Platforms, Communities and Focus Groups, as captured in the ELIXIR Scientific Programme.

Goals

The key objective of BioHackathon Europe is to advance the development of an open-source service infrastructure to accelerate scientific innovation. We focus on areas that support the work of ELIXIR Platforms, Communities and Focus Groups, covering areas such as FAIR principles, identifiers, metadata standards, ontologies and metadata catalogues by engaging technical experts in the bioinformatics community, both within and beyond ELIXIR, to collaborate on topics of common interest aligned with ELIXIR activities.

Benefits

New developments

• Advancing new ideas and prototypes into fully functional tools and resources
• Enhancing existing bioinformatics resources and testing new features
• Engaging with potential users and improving documentation

Personal development and community building

• Networking with international experts in bioinformatics in one of the biggest BioHackathon events in Europe
• Gaining experience in collaborative software development
• Learning new skills in coding, data integration and tool development
• Publishing outputs such as preprints or white papers based on BioHackathon project outcomes

Industry engagement

BioHackathon Europe welcomes participants from industry and encourages collaboration between academia and commercial partners. Companies interested in contributing to projects or proposing challenges can get in touch via ELIXIR’s Industry and Innovation office. For more information, contact ELIXIR Industry and Innovation Officer Despoina Sousoni (despoina.sousoni@elixir-europe.org).

‘It was an amazing experience…Two teams embraced our challenge to demonstrate the validity of edge computing. We reached our goal of connecting with the bioinformatics community and creating awareness for a new technology. No doubt we will participate in the future.’

Natalia Jimenez (Atos)

Code of Conduct

BioHackathon Europe follows the ELIXIR Code of Conduct to ensure a respectful and inclusive environment for all participants. The Code of Conduct applies to both in-person and virtual interactions during the event.