30 Temmuz 2015 Perşembe

'Making History' - The First Bioinformatics Hackathon in Turkey

This previous Monday and Tuesday, the crew and Ahmet Rasit embarked on a Hackathon. A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development (and hardware development), including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.




We had five tasks. We decided to divide into two group to increase our efficiency via friendly competition. The group leaders were Ahmet Rasit, and Osman Türkyılmaz. This was the very first Bioinformatics Hackathon in Turkey which Python, the coding language. The event was a long but sweet fortyeight hour long journey,  which was very educational, both with regards to coding knowledge, and life skills.


The captains got to choose who they wanted on their team. Ahmet Rasit picked up Cansu and Fatma, and me. Osman went with Seyt, Mustafa, Ahmet (Paker), and, Neslihan. My team and I were called the “Beans”, and Osman and his crew were called “Chickpeas”. We worked on high-troughput data analysis (NGS and Mass Spec). The purpose of the activity was to solve real world problems which had already been addressed before, but from scratch. We also used samples of Ahmet Rasit’s very own genome sequence, just to make things a bit more personal, to allow the crew to engage in the mission more robustly. We coded from scratch because we wanted to be sure that we understood the essence, origin, and reason of the purpose of the existence of such codes. Once you understand why, and how, you can apply the same approach to multiple other coding situations, and i believe this was the reason why Ahmet Rasit chose to go down this path.

Personally, i think that the procedure as a whole was an overall  huge success. Hats off to Ahmet Rasit and Osman Türkyılmaz for the on point planning and organization. We re-designed the room to fit our needs. We layed down rugs, brought in portable and comfortable chairs you could sleep or rest on, we stocked up snacks and coffee. All these were positive and highly appreciated, but as a consequence it was costly, especially to our sole sponsor; Ahmet Rasit. The room was big enough to fit ten people comfortably, but it would be a lot better if the room was bigger for the purpose of functionality. I do hope that next time this happens, there would be more people sponsoring the event. I also observed that the efficiency of our crew decreased at night time, so if i could do it again, i would like it if we could start early, around sunrise, and start resting around midnight.

You can examine our codes at: http://193.255.88.41/wiki/staj/BiyoHackaton2015. If you are interested in a close up of our efforts, these hour to hour progress based tweets could maybe quench your thirst: https://twitter.com/biyohackathon.



    
(The crew after the 48 hour long Hackathon, with our 5 completed Tasks taped on the door. Right to Left: (Me) Mehmed Canatan, Ahmet Paker( peace sign), Seyt Zor (below), Ahmet Raşit Öztürk, Osman Türkyılmaz, Fatma Cankara, Ayşegül Murat, Servet Özcan, Neslihan Kaya, Cansu Demirel, Mustafa Canatan)

3 yorum:

  1. Do you have any contact address that I can ask you a few questions about Bioinformatics ? I'm an undergrad. Computer Engineering student :)

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    1. Sure, here you go: mehmedfatihcanatan@gmail.com

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  2. I hope that you will be giving us updates on how the plan worked out. Interesting how you have everything all ready to go and everyone is on board. The picture of everyone looks amazing. Seems like they are all excited to take on this challenge. Look forward to seeing how everything works out in the end for all those guys.

    Lucius Cambell @ Skild

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