Lambda Hack Basel — a one-day hackathon in Basel's most advanced and affordable DIY Laboratory
What it is
A one-day hackathon at Lambda Biolab on Riehenstrasse 14. Wet lab, compute, hardware, equipment hacking, or bring your own project — pick a lane and build something real. Free to attend. Space is limited; registration closes when we hit capacity.
The five tracks
Wet Lab — Clone, transfect, engineer. BSL-1 bench with cloning reagents, enzymes, and cell lines from Lambda Biolab stock. Every entrant gets 2 weeks of Lambda Biolab bench access after the event to finish their results.
Dev — Protein structure, docking, directed evolution, autonomous agents. 32-core i9 + RTX 4090 on-site (shared), plus cloud GPU credits.
Robotics — Build, wire, actuate. 3D printers available at Lambda Biolab throughout the event.
Lab Equipment Hacking — Crack open the black box. Reverse-engineer firmware,protocols, and hardware on real lab instruments.
Bring Your Own Topic — Continue an existing project at the intersection ofbiology, hardware, or data science. Declare it in this registration form.
What you get
Full lab access during the event
Claude and OpenRouter API credits
Per-track prizes: vast.ai GPU credit, Starship Factory access, Lambda Biolab bench membership, Bolt/Vercel Pro
Wet Lab teams: 2 weeks of bench access after the event + a two-phase judging format (Best Plan on the day, Best Result two weeks later — 1 month free benchmembership per prize)
The rules, in one line
Public Git repo, BSL-1 only, no viral vectors, PPE at the bench, and you own your project (AI assistants welcome, but you drove the design).
Logistics
Where: Lambda Biolab, Riehenstrasse 14, 4058 Basel
When: Date TBD
Cost: Free
Full rules, schedule, and tracks: lambdabiolab.com/lambda-biolab-hack-a-thon(replace with your actual site URL when you deploy)