Scripps Research Hackathon 2026
Scripps Institute-Wide Hackathon
Hosted by the Scripps Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (CBB) affinity group in partnership with the ISCB and AWS.
(Not joining the hackathon? You're still welcome to attend the sessions below.)
Hackathon
Tackle real biological datasets, build new collaborations, and sharpen your computational toolkit — no prior experience required, no pressure to get it perfect.
Bring your own project, or pick from the suggested ideas — either path is welcome. Same goes for teams: come with a team already assembled, or form one on the day during Friday morning’s project pitches and team-formation session.
What to expect: Teams will work on biological/chemical problems of their choosing — drawing from datasets contributed by Scripps labs or open-source resources. The main hacking day is on Friday, with team presentations and awards on the following Monday. It's a low-stakes sandbox to explore cutting-edge tools — AWS cloud services and agentic AI (including enterprise access to Claude Code) — without the pressure of your own research. Think of it as dedicated time to play, experiment, and see what's possible. Then bring those skills back to your own projects and open up new directions you couldn't before.
Why participate:
Learn by doing — hands-on experience with AWS cloud services and agentic AI tools (including enterprise access to Claude Code)
Prizes for top teams
Top teams may be invited to present at the AWS Summit on July 28th
Walk away with new skills and new collaborators to show for it
Free food, cloud compute, and expert feedback
Who should come: Anyone at Scripps who's curious — graduate students, postdocs, staff scientists, and researchers at any level of computational experience. If you've never written a line of code, that's okay. Domain expertise, biological intuition, and fresh perspectives are just as valuable as technical chops, and this is a great environment to pick up new skills alongside people who have them.
Training Sessions
Two training sessions will be held on the morning of May 29th, open to all — hackathon participants and non-participants alike:
Agentic AI Bootcamp with Dr. Andrew Su — May 29th, 10:15–11:00am (Hazen Seminar Room) A quick-start guide to leveraging agentic AI for your research, including tips and tricks to get up and running fast.
AWS 101 with Omar Tabbakha — May 29th, 11:00am–12:15pm (Hazen Seminar Room) A practical guide to leveraging AWS for science, covering setup, the open data registry, freely available protein foundation models, and more.
Lunch will be provided for hackathon and training session attendees.
Schedule
Day 1: Friday, May 29th (Kresge Library)
9:05am - Welcome
9:15am – Address (Dr. Jamie Williamson)
9:30am - Project pitches
9:40am - Team formation
10:00am - Project outlining
10:15am - Agentic AI bootcamp (Dr. Benjamin Good)
Claude Code setup, example use-cases, limitations, Scripps HPC skill
11:00am - AWS 101 (Omar Tabbakha)
Getting familiar with working within AWS, Amazon Open Data, Amazon Bio Discovery, Amazon Bedrock
12:15pm - Lunch (Hackathon & training session participants)
12:45pm - Time for hacking
4:45pm - EOD announcements
5:00pm - Dinner (Hackathon participants only)
Day 2: Monday, June 1st (Kresge Library)
10:00am - Welcome
10:10am - Project presentations (5-10min/project)
12:00pm - Lunch / Judge deliberations
12:30pm - Prize announcements
12:35pm - Wrap-up and acknowledgements