Reinvent the Wheel: A Tools for Science Hack
AI × Science Tool-building Hackathon
London (Kings Cross)
Friday 16th (evening) to Sunday 18th October
Reinvent the Wheel is organised by Science Works and Inherent Laboratories.
Why reinvent the wheel? Because lots of scientific research still runs on outdated software with clunky interfaces, unexplained bugs, or poor usability. Much of this software is expensive, hard to access or install, or simply not fit for the era of AI in science.
Over three days, teams of scientists, engineers, designers, and tool-builders will work together to build better software for science using agentic AI. Bench scientists who rely on software but don't write code are especially welcome. You'll be paired with builders to turn your frustrations into working tools.
All participants will retain access to free Claude Max 20x subscriptions for the rest of the month.
We want to fix scientific software that…
Is hard to use.
Is any kind of bottleneck in day-to-day research.
Goes unmaintained, or is difficult to install on modern machines.
Outputs data in closed, non-interoperable formats.
Can’t interface with other tools, or be easily extended or customised.
Has no endpoints for agentic control.
Could be doing more to automate drudgery & free up human capacity.
Is written in a legacy language no one uses anymore.
Is prohibitively expensive or restrictively licensed.
Who Should Come
This hackathon will be a collaborative and supportive space for participants of all backgrounds and skill sets. We welcome:
Researchers & technicians with ideas for tools that are in need of reinvention.
Engineers & AI builders looking for problems deeper than another productivity app.
Designers who believe scientific software deserves intuitive, thoughtfully crafted (and beautiful) interfaces.
Students, founders, experimentalists, computational scientists, and independent builders eager to share ideas and solve real problems.
Teams, Prizes, and Ownership
Teams: 1–4 people. Solo builders are welcome; we will help connect you with collaborators on Friday evening.
Prizes: To be announced! Prizes will be awarded to the overall winner and a People’s Choice selected by fellow participants.
Ownership: At the end of the weekend, each project must be made public under a permissive open-source license. This snapshot stays open-source, though creators may keep any later development private.
How It Works
Friday 18 October: Evening kickoff, a panel on the tools science needs, dinner and team formation.
Saturday 19 October: A full day of building, with mentors, technical support, and office hours.
Sunday 20 October: Final building, demos, judging, and prizes.
Dinner will be provided on Friday, and lunch and snacks on Saturday.
With thanks to CompMotifs for support in organising, and to Anthropic, Pillar VC, Hugging Face, DaltonTx, and IQ Capital for their support.