Wednesday, September 16-Friday, September 18, 2026
Overview
The St. Jude BioHackathon is a collaborative event designed to tackle pressing challenges in biomedical data science through innovative, team-based solutions. This hackathon brings together multidisciplinary experts including computational biologists, software engineers, clinicians, and data scientists, to accelerate progress in pediatric research.
What to expect:
Work on impactful projects that advance data-driven discoveries.
Collaborate with peers across diverse scientific and technical backgrounds.
Contribute to solutions that support St. Jude’s mission to find cures and save children.
Explore past St. Jude Biohackathon teams and the innovative projects they created.
What is a hackathon?
An event where diverse, multidisciplinary participants gather, collaborate, and build software-based solutions that address real-world needs during a 48-72-hour span. Hackathons foster new relationships among community researchers, encouraging the sharing of knowledge and ideas. Participants are provided the opportunity to flex their creative muscles while building solutions that address existing challenges – often acquiring new skills in the process.
Why participate in BioHackathon?
Spark Collaboration
Meet and collaborate with St. Jude bioinformaticists, computational biologists, biostatisticians, imaging experts, data scientists, software engineers, and more. St. Jude has well over 200 employees with computational job titles across nearly all departments. The Hackathon is an opportunity to work directly with a diverse team on an exciting project to help solve problems proposed by the research community.
Learn and Expand your Skills
Hackathons provide an excellent opportunity to learn new skills, technologies, and methods. Learn from your teammates and other teams, be recognized for your skills, and identify local experts for a given method, technology, or framework.
Build Something
Step out of your comfort zone to work on a passion project, something outside your field entirely, or finally put that experimental method that's been bouncing around your head for months to the test. Hackathons are a rare environment in that failure is an acceptable outcome so long as useful knowledge is gained.
Ways to participate
Great ideas emerge when technical, scientific, clinical, and creative perspectives come together. Whether you build technology, work with data, conduct research, or shape user experiences, there are many ways to contribute to BioHackathon.
Technical Contributors
Developers, engineers, programmers, and low-code creators who help bring ideas to life through technical problem-solving and solution development.
Whether building applications, workflows, dashboards, pipelines, or AI-enabled tools, Builders help transform concepts into working prototypes and practical solutions
Data Explorers
Data scientists, wranglers, analysts, bioinformaticians, graduate students, and data-minded researchers who turn complex information into meaningful insight.
Data explorers help teams interpret datasets, identify patterns, frame research questions, and connect technical findings to scientific or clinical relevance.
Domain Experts
Clinicians, researchers, laboratory professionals, public health experts, and subject matter specialists who bring real-world scientific and healthcare expertise.
Domain Experts help ensure projects are grounded in meaningful problems, practical application, and patient-centered impact.
Product Designers
Product managers, strategists, UX/UI experts, science communicators, and visualization enthusiasts who shape how solutions are experienced and understood.
These contributors help teams organize ideas, improve usability, clarify workflows, and communicate insights through storytelling, design, and data visualization.
St. Jude Biohackathon Planning Committee
Advisors
Gang Wu, PhD
Director, Center for Applied Bioinformatics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Susanna Downing Bioinformatics Research Scientist, Center for Pediatric Neurological Disease Research, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Jared Andrews, PhD Senior Bioinformatics Research Scientist, Department of Developmental Neurobiology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Programs & Review Committee
Participant Onboarding Subcommittee
Projects Review and Team Assignment Subcommittee
Project Judging Subcommittee
Technical Support Subcommittee
Event Operations Committee
Malvika Sharan, PhD Senior Director of Data Science, Office of Data Science
Ariel Maclin
Program Coordinator, Office of Data Science
Madison Phelps, PhD Sr. Scientific Writer, Office of Data Science
Karlisa Cryer, MPA
Scientific Digital Marketing Specialist, Office of Data Science
Hope Dalton Sr. Communication Strategy Specialist, Strategic Communication, Education and Outreach (SCEO)
