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Hackathon - London Tech Week 2026

Abstract

Teams will tackle a molecular modelling challenge based on experimentally determined protein–ligand structural and binding data. Developed with OpenBind, an open-science initiative generating high-quality experimental protein–ligand data for AI-driven structure-based drug discovery, the challenge will include a blind prediction component for prospective evaluation. Participants will develop AI workflows for binding mode and affinity prediction, using approaches that could include docking, co-folding, and machine learning. The hackathon will reward predictive performance, scientific creativity, effective use of Isambard-AI, and reproducible approaches that demonstrate how AI and computational workflows can accelerate molecular discovery.

Registration

The Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS) is supporting a hackathon as part of London Tech Week on Wednesday the 10th of June at 09:00 - 17:00.

The Hackathon is open to participants from the following:

  • UK research organisations (e.g. universities and research institutes .ac.uk)
  • UK industry (UK registered business of any size with a Companies House registration number)
  • UK Government
  • NHS
  • UK registered charities

In order to take part in the Hackathon and gain access to the system, you must:

  1. Pre-register for the Hackathon by filling in the following form by 17:00 on Thursday the 4th of June 2026
  2. Bring your own laptop

Register for Hackathon

Warning

If you have not pre-registered you will not be able to access the system on the day.

You must register with your institutional or professional email address. Strong compliance rules mean that invitations to personal email addresses (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook) are not allowed.

Required pre-Hackathon steps

If you have completed the above successfully, you will receive an email from [email protected] with the subject "Invitation to the London Tech Week Hackathon 2026 project".

After registration and receiving the invite, you will be contacted with some steps to do before the Hackathon. You should follow steps 1-4 after you receive an invitation email.

If you have an account with a research institute supported by MyAccessID (you can check this at https://mms.myaccessid.org/fed-apps/profile/) then you should use this option. When logging in to any Isambard services, you should always choose "University Login (MyAccessID)". If not, check the "Non-research affiliation" tab.

If your institution or company does not support EduGAIN/MyAccessID as a federated login solution, we will have to create you an account in our "identity provider of last resort" (hosted in AWS), this will be done within 24 working hours of receipt of your email. In the email from [email protected] you will receive instructions on how to create your AWS accounts, using the same email address that you signed up for the Hackathon. Once that account is set up and working, from now on when working with Isambard you should always select the "Other Login (IdP of last resort)" option on the login screen.

Warning

You must complete the required pre-Hackathon steps and set your UNIX username in advance of the Hackathon.

Access will not be allowed for online attendees. You must attend the Hackathon in person. You should promptly inform us if you can no longer attend the Hackathon by emailing us.

This Hackathon has been allocated a finite amount of compute time to be shared between all participants. Users must not run long-running or large-scale jobs before the Hackathon and should use the resources as instructed during the Hackathon.