About the 2026 edition
MAKE Initiative · DLAI · SV Industry
The 2026 edition of the Protein Design Week has seen loads of duccess! We welcomed over 45 hackers coming from all around Europe. These motivated bioengineers have engaged in a series of protein-design challenges all throughout the week, having the opportunity to learn from experts in the field.
The hackathon weekend has seen tremendous participation and innovation! All teams demonstrated exceptional creativity and technical skills, which were throughly recognised by the judges.
Judges
The judges for the 2026 edition of the Protein Design Week hackathon are a distinguished group of experts from academia. They brought a wealth of experience in protein design and bioengineering to evaluate the innovative solutions presented by the participants. The 2026 edition of the Hackathon was evaluated by Basile Wicky, Matteo dal Peraro, and Vojislav Gligorovski.
The ambience during the weekend was thrilling, and the talent displayed by the participants was impressive. The 2026 edition saw 4 winners, with a tie at the third place!
The 2026 hackathon winning teams
- 🥇: Sofia Filippini, Sebastiàn Suñer-Sànchez, Zora Althaus
- 🥈: Ricardo Heinzmann, Chaewon Yoon, Nathan Bowman, Nehir Caglar
- 🥉: Seyed Saeed Mottaghi, Ananya G. Soh, Wen Kang, Youssef Abdelmaksoud
- 🥉: Jana Anton, Yahyaa Osman, Ahmed Iris Segard
2026 Edition hackathon challenges
The 2026 edition of the Protein Design Week hackathon featured a series of exciting challenges designed to push the boundaries of computational protein design. Participants were tasked with creating innovative solutions to real-world problems in bioengineering and synthetic biology.
Here is a list of the 2026 projects, proposed both by our industry partners, as well as our partner labs.
- Lemna Bio: Designing The Next-Gen Antibiotic Shield
- Adaptyv Bio: Targeting myostatin for preserved muscle mass during GLP-1 therapy
- Gruber lab, UNIL: Bacterial Defence with Wadjet JetABCD complex
- Collier lab, UNIL: Screening for novel anti-microbial peptides (AMP) targeting Alphaproteobacterial pathogens with complex genomes
- Gray lab, Johns Hopkins: Generalizing antibodies’ developability predictions across studies
- Constam lab: Rational Design of a KH1-KH2 Inhibitor of RNA Binding by Bicc1
- Structural biology project: Post-translational precision manipulation of the proteome
- Schwede lab, Uni Basel: De Novo CDR Engineering of Nanobodies Against PD-L1
- Alternative protein Project, EPFL: Designing Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF2) for Cultivated Meat and Stem Cell Research
Follow us on social media to stay updated on team member profiles and activities!
Stay connected
Follow our activities, events and project updates on social media and EPFL channels.
Meet the Team
The Protein Design Week is organized by a dedicated team of students, engineers and academics from EPFL. Our team is committed to advancing the field of computational protein design through education, collaboration, and innovation. We are passionate about protein design and synthetic biology, and have the goal to popularise these amazing disciplines for biohackers coming from all backgrounds.
We all come from the Life Science Engineering (SV) faculty at EPFL. We are proud to be part of the MAKE initiative, which supports open science and innovation in synthetic biology and bioengineering.
Follow us on social media to stay updated on team member profiles and activities!
Our Partners
We are grateful for the support of our partners, whose contributions have been instrumental in making the Protein Design Week a reality. Their expertise, resources, and commitment to advancing the field of protein design have been invaluable to our success.
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