DNAForge × MTC: AI × Biology Hackathon
Hosted by DNAForge
One focused day for biology students, early-career scientists, and technical builders to turn consequential biological problems into working prototypes.
Saturday, November 14th, 2026
Hours: 9:00 AM–9:00 PM
Scale: About 100 participants
Three tracks
Three domains where biological judgment and technical execution must meet. Choose a problem worth a day of concentrated work.
Therapeutics. Build tools that help researchers design, evaluate, or deliver new treatments.
Biosecurity. Build practical defenses for biological risks, laboratory safety, and preparedness.
Agricultural resilience. Build for healthier crops, stronger food systems, and biological climate adaptation.
Who belongs in the room
Biological fluency is a building skill. Early-career scientists, wet-lab researchers, computational biologists, clinicians, agricultural scientists, ML researchers, software engineers, and designers.
Application principles
Applications are individual. If you want to attend with a team, every person on that team must submit their own application. Listing teammates in your application does not apply for them.
Teams can form before or during the event. We will help admitted participants find complementary collaborators.
Applying does not guarantee admission. DNAForge reviews each application for this limited-capacity event.
The event is in person. Every applicant must confirm they can attend in Berkeley for the full participant program.
Admissions timeline
Apply early. Every applicant gets a clear status.
October 25th: Priority deadline. Applications received by this date receive first consideration.
October 28th: First decisions. The first admission decisions are planned for this date.
November 6th: Final cutoff. Last day to submit an individual application.
November 7th: Final waitlist decisions. Remaining applicants receive their planned final status.
Host and event support
MTC Berkeley, Modal, Boltz, Tamarind Bio, GXL, Carbon Fellowship, and BenchFlow.
Applicant data: DNAForge and event sponsors can view your name, email address, application answers, LinkedIn profile, any other links you provide, and application status. Sponsors may contact applicants, including those not admitted, for recruiting and marketing.