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NCBI Comparative Genomics Codeathon: Advancing Human Health through Collaborative Discovery

Date and Time:  September 8-12, 2025 11 AM - 5 PM (EST)

Details: Comparative genomics is a fast-growing field focused on genetic similarities and differences between species to better understand biology and human disease. Comparing genomes helps scientists discover the mechanisms behind health-related phenomena, such as slowing of the aging process, effective wound healing, robust immune responsiveness, and disease resistance.  As technology improves and more data becomes available, studying both closely and distantly related species can help advance human health.

To address a growing need for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and an exploration of the data produced and available for this research, the NCBI has been developing the NIH Comparative Genomics Resource (CGR).  CGR facilitates reliable comparative genomics analyses for all eukaryotic organisms through community collaboration and a National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) genomics toolkit. The toolkit includes high-quality data, tools, and interfaces for connecting community-provided resources with NCBI. In addition to supporting the community with this resource, we are also hosting a codeathon where researchers can get hands on experience and support with them to solve real-world problems!

This codeathon will be held virtually and will be a collaborative, not competitive, event where teams will share ideas and technical skills. We seek to bring together researchers with expertise in the life and/or translational sciences, as well as people with bioinformatics or data science skills. Programmers and non-programming subject matter experts are encouraged to apply for this event. It’s a great opportunity to network, build new collaborations, and explore career opportunities in an interactive setting.

During this week-long virtual codeathon (core working hours: 11 AM – 5 PM ET), teams of 5-8 people will work together to create innovative solutions. Here are some examples of projects that fit within the event’s scope:

  • Multi-organism Gene Expression Comparison Analysis for Elucidating Novel Biosystems and Pathways
  • Pangenome Visualization to Explore Genomic Variation Patterns in Lymphoma & Leukemia Progression
  • Pipeline for Rapid Assessment of Genome Assembly Quality
  • Mapping Variants onto 3D Macromolecules to Improve Structure-based Targeted Chemotherapies
  • An Interactive Jupyter Notebook to Teach Whole Genome Alignment Analysis for Discovery of Structural Variants associated with Human Disease

Projects in this codeathon will use NCBI data and tools, including GenBank and RefSeq nucleotide and protein sequences, along with resources specifically developed for and enhanced by the NIH CGR project for data access, analysis, and visualization, such as NCBI Datasets, BLAST, genome analysis pipelines (FCS and EGAPx), CDD, sequence viewers (GDV, CGV/MCGV), and the sequence/structure viewer (iCn3D). 

At the end of the event, teams will present their work to each other and representatives from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).


NCBI Outreach Team: 

  • Alexa Salsbury, PhD is the lead for this codeathon. Her background is in structural biology, computational chemistry, biophysics, CADD, and data science.
  • Rana Morris, PhD is a NCBI Subject Matter Expert and is providing support for this codeathon. With over 20 years of experience at NCBI, her background includes biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, genomics, diagnostic development, and coordination of genetics/genomics components in clinical trials.
NCBI Systems-Cloud Team: 
  • Brian Koser is the Cloud Team Lead for this codeathon. He is a Cloud Administrator at NCBI and has been supporting cloud-based data sharing projects at NIH for the past thirteen years.
  • Do Hyung Kim, PhD is a new NCBI Cloud team member assisting cloud-related tasks to support codeathon research projects. He has previously worked in several fields including cellular biology, as well as cancer and virus research. 

More information about this event is available on our NCBI Outreach Events Page.

If you have questions about this codeathon, please email us at codeathons@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Last Reviewed: May 12, 2025