This is MLH's open, battle-tested organizer guide — reframed, section by section, for the wet lab, and stress-tested against real Biopunk editions in San Francisco. Everything you need to run a prototype weekend → lab week → demo day from scratch. Steal all of it.
A Biopunk runs on the same countdown as any hackathon, with two biotech-specific dependencies bolted on early: securing a lab partner and locking reagent sponsors — both have long lead times and gate everything downstream.
Line up a licensed community lab partner (your venue and biosafety backbone — for Biopunk SF, that's Frontier Tower). Pick dates that dodge exams, holidays, and competing events. Build your core crew.
Draft the budget. Build a 2–3 page sponsor prospectus. Start sponsor outreach — reagent and DNA sponsors first. Stand up a placeholder site. Draft biosafety policy and waivers with the lab's safety officer.
Launch the real site with the hacker registration form plus judge/mentor interest forms. Begin marketing. Confirm reagent in-kind deals in writing. Spin up a Discord.
Draft the judging plan and rubric; recruit mentors and judges from the local bio scene; build the tracks; assemble the on-site stock parts kit list.
Detailed run of show for both weekends and the lab week. Final headcount; food + dietary needs; confirm the safety-induction schedule; pre-stage synthesis order templates.
Run the two days. The instant pitches are accepted, submit DNA/synthesis orders so reagents arrive for day one of the lab week.
Mentor office hours; safety officer on site; then run demo day science-fair style.
Publish the gallery, thank sponsors with numbers + photos, send surveys, settle the books, hold a retro.
Your hackathon is the product and your team is the founding team. Choose enthusiastic people with complementary skills and give each a clear domain. The one role a coding hackathon doesn't need — and you can't run without — is a Lab & Safety Lead.
The CEO. Owns the vision, the timeline, and the final call. Keeps every other lead unblocked.
Biopunk-specific. Usually the community lab's safety officer or a trusted wet-lab scientist. Owns biosafety, the risk-assessment gate, waivers, the parts kit, and bench supervision.
Sponsorship and in-kind. Owns the prospectus, the reagent/DNA deals, and vendor relationships. Starts earliest because bio fulfillment is slow.
Venue, schedule, food, swag, meal counts, transportation, run of show across both weekends.
Website, social, Discord, outreach to schools/labs/maker communities, and the story that makes people apply.
Mentors, workshops, team formation, and the small touches — nightlabs, snacks, roundtables — that make people come back.
// tooling: Discord for comms · Notion/Airtable for docs & sponsor CRM · a budget sheet · Devpost/Devfolio for the project gallery.
Purpose drives every downstream call — who you recruit, which tracks you release, which sponsors fit. Pick one clearly.
The magic of this format: the most expensive line — reagents and lab access — is largely covered by in-kind sponsorship, not cash. Start from a simple sheet, build per-person, keep a buffer. Illustrative for a ~40-person, 20-team event:
| Line item | Rough figure | How it's covered |
|---|---|---|
| Lab access | Block booking + short-term memberships across ~9 days | Sponsored or discounted by the host lab |
| Reagents & DNA | The biggest "cost" on paper | In-kind: Twist, IDT, NEB, Addgene, Plasmidsaurus |
| Compute / cloud | For design & analysis tracks | In-kind: AWS/GCP/Azure/Modal credits |
| Food | ~$8–10 / person / meal; snacks ~$10 / person | Cash / food sponsor |
| Swag | ~$5–8 / person (skip white tees — they go see-through) | Cash / sponsor |
| Prizes (cash) | Whatever you can raise — participants get paid | Cash + sponsored prize tracks |
| Buffer | Always hold $1,000–$3,000 back | Cash |
// meal claim rates fall over an event — order less as it progresses (~90% first lunch → 30% breakfast).
Biotech has an unusually mature in-kind culture — because iGEM spent 20 years training the industry to donate to student synbio teams. Instead of cash, companies give product and service access: DNA, reagents, sequencing, software, compute, equipment time. This is what makes "free to enter, get paid to win" financially possible.
The single best decision you can make: partner with an existing community/DIY-bio lab. They already hold the BSL-1 license, insurance, equipment, and a trained safety officer. You rent turnkey capacity — a group booking plus a block of memberships and a reagent budget — instead of certifying your own space. (Biopunk SF does exactly this at Frontier Tower's wet-lab floor.)
Borrow iGEM's culture. Keep the whole event to non-human, non-clinical, BSL-1 work and you sidestep the heavy regulatory machinery — while still teaching responsible science. Screening happens at the pitch, before anything touches a bench.
Where a one-week wet-lab format lives or dies. Custom DNA does not arrive overnight — Twist gene fragments run ~2–8 business days, clonal genes 4–10. If teams only order after pitching, DNA may not land until day 4–5, leaving no bench time. Three mitigations, use all of them:
Accepted pitches trigger synthesis orders on Sunday of the prototype weekend, so DNA arrives day one of the lab week. This is why DNA sponsorship must be locked in advance.
Keep an on-site kit — Addgene plasmids, an iGEM-style distribution kit, standard strains and enzymes — so teams can build immediately from stock parts.
Frame tracks so winning designs are buildable from stock or rush parts. A tight prompt is a gift — it keeps every team inside the week.
MLH's judging science transfers directly. Run an in-person expo — teams at numbered stations, judges circulating — not siloed judging rooms. Every project seen by at least three judges.
Use MLH's formula:
J = ⌈(P × n × t) / T⌉
P = projects · n = rounds per project (use 3) · t = minutes per project (use 4) · T = total judging minutes.
e.g. 20 projects × 3 × 4 / 90 min ≈ 3 judges circulating.
Stack ranking normalizes lenient vs. strict judges: each judge names their top 3 → award 3 / 2 / 1 points → the highest totals bubble up. Organizers validate the top 3–5, run a quick integrity check, then announce. It's hard to break a spreadsheet — start there before any fancy platform.
// recruit judges from local founders, PIs, and biotech operators. give each a shift; brief them on the rubric.
Teams set up numbered stations with laptops, plates, gels, and printed one-pagers.
Welcome + keynote from a local bio figure; explain judging and safety.
Judges circulate; ~3 min pitch + Q&A per judge, ≥3 judges each. Public/family welcome.
Judges stack-rank over lunch; organizers validate top projects and run the integrity check.
Top 3–5 present on the main stage to the full room.
Cash + in-kind prizes; sponsor thank-yous; a photo everyone remembers; point people to the gallery. Afterparty optional but encouraged.
The ideological core of Biopunk. Value flows toward the builder. Assemble a stack from several sources so winners walk away with money, momentum, and a network. Real Biopunk editions have handed out cash, lab memberships, glowing plants, books, and longevity loot.
Whatever you can raise. Even modest pools reframe the event: you're paid for your work.
Sequencing runs, lab membership, glow plants, equipment or cloud time — fuel to keep going.
Micro-grants or incubator intros so the best proofs-of-concept don't die on Monday.
Warm intros to founders, labs, and recruiters. The talent network is the durable prize.
// let sponsors fund named tracks (Best Biosensor, Best Sustainability Hack, Best Use of [tool]).
Adopt a Code of Conduct before you open registration. MLH's is the reusable industry standard and can be forked freely — layer your biosafety rules on top.
Write every project into a public, searchable gallery (Devpost/Devfolio-style) with data, team, and code. This is the portfolio layer — it persists and compounds long after the event, and it's your best recruiting tool for next time.
Thank sponsors with real numbers + your best photos and offer a renewal. Email post-event surveys to participants and sponsors. Settle the books and send final payments. Hold a team retro while it's fresh.
Every great hackathon site converges on the same architecture. Ship the landing page with a registration form first; add the rest as you go. (This very site is a working template — fork it.)
Tell us where you are and we'll connect you with a lab, a starter sponsor list, and the founding-host network.
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