Biopunk Lab throws open the lab doors. Wet-lab hackathons where builders, hackers, artists, and scientists walk into a real BSL-1 lab, run an experiment, and win prizes. No VC buzzwords. No gatekeeping. No PhD. No entry fee. Just pure creative biotech.
A beginner-friendly, high-ambition hackathon for anyone biocurious enough to get their hands dirty. What Major League Hacking did for code, Biopunk does for cells — a repeatable format where you design an experiment, run it in a real lab, and walk away with a result you own.
This ain't a weekend sprint and forget. It's a two-phase build: a concept weekend to pitch, a full lab week to run it, and a demo day to show what you made. Your napkin sketch becomes a living experiment.
// no pre-reqs. scientists, designers, engineers, artists, and creatives all welcome.
Teams form, ideas mutate, and you pitch an experiment you can actually run in a week at BSL-1. Judges screen for feasibility, novelty, and safety. Green-lit pitches advance to the lab.
Survivors enter the lab. Selected teams get bench access, dedicated workspace, mentorship, and in-kind reagents. Your sketch becomes a real experiment, a real prototype, real validation.
Teams present evolved creations to a panel of judges — live demos, data, Q&A. The strongest specimens survive. Winners walk away with cash, in-kind loot, and a portfolio piece.
Tracks drop at kickoff — often owned by a sponsor who brings the challenge, the reagents, and a judge. Past editions have run Longevity × AI, Robotics, Biosecurity, DeSci tooling, and real-time bio-imaging.
Neurofeedback, AI-assisted design, brain–computer symbiosis.
Biometrics, longevity protocols, aging & ECM imaging.
Engineer cells that detect a signal and report it.
DIY bio rigs, biomanufacturing, living materials, synbio.
Survive selection and claim your rewards. The value flows toward the builder — never a five-figure invoice pointed the other way.
For the top-performing specimens. Real prize money — you get paid to build.
1 month of lab + workspace so your project doesn't die on Monday.
Light.bio glowing petunias. Enhanced plants for enhanced humans.
Workspace, lab, and the whole 16-floor frontier-tech ecosystem.
For the specimens who want to think as hard as they build.
Curated bio-enhancement loot to keep your body optimized post-hack.
// exact prizes vary by edition. past examples from real Biopunk Lab events.
Born at Frontier Tower — a 16-floor vertical village on Market Street, San Francisco — Biopunk Lab HQ puts a BSL-1 wet lab, an in-silico compute lab, and a makerspace under one roof. $500k+ of gear, open to specimens.
Biopunk Lab and the Biopunk Community have already run it, repeatedly, in San Francisco. Proof the model works — and the seed for taking it global.
A 10-day sprint of wild bio-experimentation with $500k+ of lab access, workshops, nightlabs, and a demo night. 168 organisms showed up.
A 2-day buildathon at the intersection of synthetic biology, web3 tooling, and radical open science. "What hackathon has access to a real wet lab?"
A $5k-prize hackathon building real-time imaging hardware to study the ECM for aging research. BSL-1 wet lab + maker space.
The two-phase format in full: prototype weekend → lab week → demo day. $15,000+ in prizes. Curiosity > credentials.
Real events, real judges, real backers. Editions have been judged by biotech founders and investors, and powered by an ecosystem of frontier-science partners.
iGEM proved hands-on synbio creates talent, portfolios, and companies. Then it priced them out: ~€7,700–€8,700 in team fees before anyone travels, a faculty sponsor required. Biopunk keeps the outcomes and deletes the paywall — and pays participants instead of charging them.
Run a lab, a chapter, or you're just the one who always organizes things? Take the entire playbook — timeline, budget, sponsors, safety, judging — and mutate your corner of the world.
// updates. announcements. squad assembly. all channels active.