Tracks drop at the prototype-weekend kickoff — often owned by a sponsor who supplies the challenge, the reagents, and a judge. Every track is scoped so a winning idea is buildable in one week at a BSL-1 bench. Teams pick one.
A company owns a track: writes the challenge, funds the prize, supplies in-kind reagents, sends a mentor/judge. Past editions: Biosecurity by Pilgrim, workshops by Seanome.
Prompts are framed so the winning design can be built from stock or rush parts and validated by demo day. A tight prompt keeps every team inside the week.
Every track lives inside the biosafety envelope: non-human, non-clinical, well-characterized organisms. The gate is baked into the challenge.
A starter menu drawn from real Biopunk editions (Longevity × AI, Robotics, Biosecurity, DeSci, bio-imaging) plus the classic buildable synbio lanes. Adapt to your city, your sponsors, and a regional problem.
Merge silicon and grey matter. Neurofeedback loops, AI-assisted design and decision-making, cognitive amplifiers, brain–computer symbiosis. Where compute meets the mind.
Push the biological machine past its factory settings. Biometrics, longevity protocols, recovery optimization, aging biology, ECM imaging — the through-line of Biopunk's BioViz and Human Enhancement editions.
Engineer cells or cell-free systems that detect something and report it — a contaminant, a metabolite, a signal — with a colour or fluorescence you can read by eye or plate reader.
Engineer a microbe to make a molecule — a pigment, flavour, fragrance, protein, or living material. Biohack mycelium, brew a dye, grow something that shouldn't exist yet.
From the Biopunk DeSci edition: citizen-led trials, remote wet-lab automation, peer-to-peer publishing, DAO-governed science, on-chain lab protocols, decentralized environmental sensing.
New ways for meat to talk to metal — plus the tools that lower the barrier itself. Sensor rigs, experimental wearables, DIY bio hardware, low-cost lab instruments, robotics (40+ SO101 arms on tap).
Beyond the track winners, borrow iGEM's opt-in special-prize structure — awards that reward good practice regardless of track, and keep the event welcoming to newcomers.
The host kit shows how to line up sponsor-owned tracks and scope prompts so every team can actually ship by demo day.