BioHackathon Europe is ELIXIR’s annual flagship event that brings together bioinformaticians from around the world to work collaboratively on various hacking projects. This year, it was in Barcelona, Spain with 180 in-person participants and over 140 online, hacking through 30 bioinformatics projects.
The project networking on the first day encouraged participants to connect and get to know other projects. On Wednesday morning, the leads for each project gave a midway report to present their progress as well as challenges, seeking help from others if needed. The cross-project collaborations that result from these midway reports are critical for project development and resonate with the core concept of BioHackathon.
Some hacking projects discussed research data management in different settings, from curating AI-ready datasets to structuring clinical research into common data models and enabling secure data access. Other topics included bioinformatics training, using BioHackRxiv for BioHackathon preprints, as well as gender representation in publications to foster diversity and inclusivity within the ELIXIR network. The wide range of project topics shows the openness of BioHackathon Europe and its goal of accelerating scientific innovation in different bioinformatics research areas, especially three scientific focus areas in ELIXIR 2024-28 Scientific Programme. The most common keywords in this year’s 30 BioHackathon projects were: data, FAIR and research.
To learn more about Biohackathon Europe 2024, please visit the BioHackathon Europe website. To see the photos from the event, please visit Flickr collection. BioHackathon Europe 2025 will take place from 3–7 November 2025 in Berlin, Germany.