2026 Virus Bioinformatics + nf-core Hybrid Collaborative Hackathon
The VirJenDB (NFDI4Microbiota) and the global nf-core community share a commitment to building open-source bioinformatics workflows (for example, in Nextflow) to enable reproducible research. We organize a collaborative hackathon as a satellite event of the International Virus Bioinformatics Meeting 2026. You do NOT have to attend ViBioM to participate in the hackathon. We invite you to join us on 12-17 May online and/or on 17 May in person in Vilnius!
Registration
The registration for the hackathon is closed – Thank you for joining!
Event Info
Start and end date: Tuesday 12 May – Sunday 17 May 2026.
The exact dates depend on the selected project (see registration form for topics and dates).
Time of the Main Hackathon on 17 May: 10:00 – 18:30 EET (09:00 – 17:30 CEST)
Type: Hybrid event (both online and in-person)
Scope: Teaming up to conduct a hybrid collaborative hackathon. This is NOT a training event, although there will be pre-hackathon training sessions offered as needed depending on your selected project.
Intended audience: Virus bioinformatics tool developers with an interest in reproducible workflows
Skills: Basic bioinformatics skills, e.g. bash, a programming language like python/R, GitHub
Requirements: Own computer, internet access, ideally a GitHub account
Organizers: Noriko Cassman (FSU Jena, NFDI4Microbiota), James Fellows Yates (nf-core, MPI-EVA, Leipzig & Leibniz-HKI, Jena)
Projects:
- 17 May | bioconda: add my favourite virus bioinformatics tool to bioconda
- 17 May | nf-core/modules: create Nextflow wrappers of your favourite virus bioinformatics tools from bioconda
- 12 – 15 May | nf-core/seqsubmit: help develop existing pipeline to submit sequences to ENA
- 12 – 15 May | metaViraVerse: extend MGNIFY’s Nextflow pipeline to create a catalogue of metagenome-derived virus sequences
- 12 – 13 May | VizAvalanche: create and improve plots (e.g. atlas) describing VirJenDB’s dataset
- 13 & 17 May | VClust-to-Nextflow: convert VirJenDB’s virus genome sequence clustering workflow to Nextflow
- 17 May | CurateKit: extend VirJenDB’s curation workflow for user input
Preliminary agenda 17 May 2026:
(all times in Eastern European Time Zone, EET)
Onsite coffee/tea and snacks provided.
| 09:30 – 10:00 | Physical room and Virtual world open! |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | Main hackathon kick off talk |
| 10:15 – 11:00 | Project onboarding meetings (bioconda, nf-core/modules) |
| 11:00 – 13:00 | HACK |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch (self-paid) |
| 14:00 – 15:00 | nf-core pipeline talks (viralmetagenome and viral recon) |
| 15:00 – 18:00 | HACK |
| 18:00 – 18:30 | Wrap up / Progress Summary / Follow-up survey |