The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are excited to announce the Resistance is Futile: A codeathon to combat antimicrobial resistance to be held virtually from September 23 – 27, 2024.

Codeathons aim to spark innovation and creative problem-solving by assembling experts to rapidly develop solutions to problems, such as deployable pipelines or bioinformatics services that will empower scientists in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Projects in this codeathon will use data from the National Database of Antibiotic Resistant Organisms (NDARO), a collaborative, cross-agency, centralized hub for researchers to access AMR data to facilitate real-time surveillance of pathogenic organisms.  Teams will be encouraged to explore NDARO and related data with NCBI Pathogen Detection project tools (such as the Isolates, MicroBIGG-E, and Antibiotic Susceptibility Test (AST) Browsers) to identify additional data which may be useful for their project.

We seek to bring together researchers with expertise in bacteriology and antimicrobial resistance with potential collaborators with skills in areas such as bioinformatics, data science, and data visualization. Programmers and non-programming subject matter experts are encouraged to apply for this event.

During the week-long codeathon (core working hours – 11am to 5pm ET), teams of 5-10 people will collaborate on solutions for the following objectives:

• Identify loss-of-function genetic variations that contribute to AMR.
• Find and classify mobile genetic elements that contribute to AMR in draft genomes.  Note: This work could integrate sequence data with epidemiological, transmission and antibiotic sensitivity testing data to identify patterns and directions of co-migrating of AMR genes or plasmids.
• Elucidate AMR biomarkers for historically hard-to-predict bacterial species (e.g., Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas).

The codeathon will be collaborative rather than competitive, with teams sharing ideas and technical expertise. This event is an interactive platform where people with diverse backgrounds and expertise can network and potentially foster new collaborations and career opportunities.

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

After the codeathon, all team products will be publicly available through the NCBI Codeathons’ GitHub site. Participants are encouraged to continue working on their projects, co-author a joint manuscript and share their work online and at conferences.

If you are interested in participating, pitching an idea for a team project, and/or serving as a team leader, please apply by July 28, 2024!

Please note that participation may be capped due to technical limitations and the total number of accepted projects.

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

Go back to the NCBI Outreach Events page.