The six teams at the second edition of the Digital4Genomics Hackathon, held 31 March to 2 April, all shared a same ambition: advance AI in biotech.

Called D4Gen for short, the event united project holders from Genopole and students from the territory’s higher-learning institutes. The constituted teams also counted members from École 42, ESGI (Grande École for computer engineering), ESSEC Business School and even MIT in Boston (USA).

The challenges for this second edition were to construct strategies for research using AI and bioinformatics with the goal of treating “Big Data” on fields of biological research touching upon interactions in complex living systems.

The objectives of D4Gen are to contribute to overcoming technological hurdles and collectively imagine novel concepts or develop problem-solving prototypes.

The €3,000 first prize was taken home by Team PreExtinction, headed by Nicolas Godron, Master 2 student in pharmacy and GENIOMHE (genomics informatics and mathematics for health and environment; University of Évry-Paris Saclay). The team focused on modeling the state of species conservation laid out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (UICN) to guide biodiversity policies and resource allocations.