Not at all — while some challenges involve coding, there are dedicated non-coding tracks focused on experimental design, problem-solving, and communication, ensuring everyone can contribute meaningfully.

Participants can apply as individuals or as teams of 3-6 members. Individual applicants will have the chance to form teams during in-person networking and team formation sessions prior to the event.

Yes — winning teams will receive prizes and certificates of participation, recognising creativity, innovation, and collaboration.

Participants will have access to pre-event workshops (on technical skills, entrepreneurship, IP, Python, and Git) and mentorship from academic and industry experts linked to each challenge.
Travel support will be available, with partial to full reimbursement (up to £60 per person) based on competition and need.

Pre-hackathon workshops are optional and can be selected based on skill levels. The main hackathon runs 20-22 March 2026 with an opening session on Friday afternoon and final judging and awards on Sunday afternoon. Teams may work on-site, online, or in a hybrid format during the weekend.

Interested academics or partners can email the organising team at [email protected] to discuss challenge proposals, mentoring, or sponsorship opportunities.

Pre-hackathon workshops: late February - mid March 2026
BioHackathon: 20 - 22 March 2026
(All dates subject to minor adjustments)

Yes — selected projects may receive continued mentorship or sponsorship support, depending on partner interest and participant initiative.

The event is organised by Ian Yang (Swain Lab, School of Biological Sciences) in collaboration with the Centre for Engineering Biology and partners across the University of Edinburgh. For all inquiries, contact [email protected].

Challenge partners propose a real, non-confidential biological, computational, or data-driven problem (e.g. workflows, datasets, analytical pipelines, conceptual challenges). Teams work intensively over the hackathon to prototype solutions, analyses, or tools.

Challenges are intended to be exploratory and prototype-focused, suitable for a 2-3 day hackathon. Challenge providers are expected to define the problem statement, context, and success criteria, but not to deliver production-ready software or fully validated pipelines.

Technical support expectations
Challenge providers may support participants in one or more of the following ways:
- Providing links to documentation, tutorials, or example repositories (e.g. via intro slides at the opening ceremony)
- Delivering an optional short workshop or Q&A session (up to 1 hour) on the relevant tools, workflows, or domain context
- Answering clarification questions and offering domain guidance during the event

There is no expectation of continuous engineering support, debugging of individual team environments, or on-call maintenance throughout the hackathon.

Deployment and executability
The organising team will carry out best-effort pre-event sanity checks (e.g. dependencies, basic executability) where needed, but full deployment validation or production-level robustness is out of scope. Teams are encouraged to focus on proof-of-concept implementations, workflow design, and methodological exploration.

Compute and infrastructure
The University of Edinburgh will provide:
- Access to the Edinburgh University's Eddie HPC cluster, including GPU resources where appropriate
- Pre-hackathon onboarding and guidance on accessing computing resources
- OpenAI API access for teams working on LLM-enabled challenges

Challenge providers are welcome (but not required) to advise on expected compute requirements or known installation/dependency issues in advance, in their introduction slide(s) or Q&A sessions.

Overall intent
The goal is to keep the burden on challenge providers low and well-defined, while enabling participants to meaningfully explore real scientific and technical problems in a supported, well-resourced environment

We ask challenge partners to:
- Attend the opening ceremony (Friday 20 March, afternoon) to introduce their challenge
- Attend the final judging, awards, and closing ceremony (Sunday 22 March, afternoon)
- Optional attendance on Saturday for Q&As and mentoring during hacking sessions

We provide:
- A sponsor stall during the weekend
- Structured networking sessions with participants
- Visibility across event materials and communications
- A 5-10 min slot for a short challenge introduction at the opening ceremony (afternoon of Friday 20 March)
- The opportunity to host a 1-hour workshop or technical session (e.g. explaining a workflow, tool, dataset, or domain challenge)

Yes. Training can be delivered either:
- As part of the pre-hackathon workshop series (late Feb-mid March), or
- On Day 1 of the hackathon as a technical workshop

We can also integrate sponsor-led training alongside academic-led sessions (e.g. Git, Python, Snakemake), depending on preference.

We ask each challenge partner to contribute prizes for winning teams in their track (typically 4-6 people per team).

Prizes may include:
- Company merchandise or digital products
- Internship, shadowing, or fast-track interview opportunities
- Other incentives relevant to your area of science or technology

Covering travel costs for your own staff attending the event is expected.
If budget allows, a small financial contribution towards event operations (e.g. catering, participant travel grants, materials) is greatly appreciated and helps ensure the sustainability of the Bio-Innovation Series, but this is not a strict requirement.

Yes. The event is explicitly designed to showcase participants' technical ability, problem-solving skills, teamwork, and communication. We strongly encourage sponsors to bring both technical staff and careers/talent representatives.

Interested academics, companies, or organisations can contact the organising team at [email protected].
Challenge proposals are collected via a short MS Form, with a submission deadline of 30 January 2026.