The fifth Annual VCU BNFOthon – an immersive experience where VCU undergraduate and graduate students can network and design innovative solutions to real-world problems - was held during the weekend of April 4 - 5, 2025. Registration for the event hit a record level, with over 50 participants representing areas of study including bioinformatics, engineering, biology, nursing, mathematics and computer science. The hackathon is the first one concentrating in bioinformatics within the mid-Atlantic region.

“BNFOthon is such a fantastic, project-based learning opportunity for our students,” states Andrew Sackman, Ph.D., faculty advisor for BNFOthon and assistant professor in VCU’s Center for Biological Data Science. “It’s a 24-hour crash course in collaborative problem solving, where our students are challenged to learn new programming tools and analyses, and to push their skills to new levels. I have never heard from a student who finished the event who didn’t feel like they learned a lot while also having a tremendous time bonding with their peers.” 

One team of non-bioinformatic majors included Sahil Chindal, who is majoring in statistics from the VCU Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research. “I joined BNFOthon because it would be a fun experience,” remarks Chindal. “As a statistics student, I wanted to gain more experience in coding while applying mathematical principles.”

The 14 teams, with a limit of four students in each team, were asked to create – or hack together – a solution to a problem chosen from any one of four themes: biomedical ethics, data visualization, machine learning applications in medicine and user interface design. Projects were judged based on team ambition, innovation, project quality, project scope, and presentation quality.

The winning team consisted of Khadeeja Bandukwala, Stella Castro, Safwan Safadi, and Kaung Sithu. They hacked together an interactive chatbot using natural language processing to help users easily find and access clinical trial information. The chatbot can answer questions, provide trial details, and guide users through eligibility criteria, with the aim to simplify access to complex medical data. This will make clinical trials more approachable for patients, researchers and healthcare professionals.

In addition to tangible prizes, the winning team will also have access to one-on-one mentoring and resume workshopping with William Benton, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the da Vinci Center.

Sackman says the event has grown quickly over the past few years, from a small, fully virtual event in Spring 2021, to nearly 60 participants and 14 teams this year. “We have an amazing group of dedicated student leaders who help organize and improve BNFOthon each year, and we look forward to potentially growing into a regional event that draws participants from beyond VCU.”

View the completed projects from this year’s hackathon here: https://bnfothon-2025.devpost.com/project-gallery