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Biological
computing,
made real.

When Fall 2026
Where Johns Hopkins · Baltimore
Format 48-hour build + summit

A student-run competition & summit

A weekend where students, researchers, and industry build on the first commercially viable biological computer.

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What it is

A hackathon for the wetware era.

The Biocomputing Competition & Summit is a weekend where teams design, build, and demo on living neural hardware — cultured neurons and cerebral organoids that learn, adapt, and compute in ways silicon can't.

Backed by Cortical Labs and hosted at Johns Hopkins, we hand teams real access to biological compute, mentorship from the labs pushing the field, and a room full of the researchers and investors deciding what gets built next.

No biology background required. Come with a laptop, a team, and an idea — we bring the wetware, the tooling, and the people who know how to use it.

48Hours to build & demo
17Partner universities
6Founding partners

Sponsors & partners

Hosted at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University

With student ambassadors representing the summit on campuses across the country.

  • Columbia UniversityColumbia University
  • Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
  • Harvard UniversityHarvard University
  • MITMIT
  • University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
  • Brown UniversityBrown University
  • Cornell UniversityCornell University
  • Yale UniversityYale University
  • Georgia TechGeorgia Tech
  • Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University
  • Duke UniversityDuke University
  • Tufts UniversityTufts University
  • UIUCUIUC
  • Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University
  • Stanford UniversityStanford University
  • CaltechCaltech
see team →

FAQ

Questions, answered.

Any current undergraduate or graduate student. Teams can mix majors and mix schools — we care about what you want to build, not what you're studying.

No. Plenty of teams come from CS, engineering, or design. Friday's onboarding and Saturday's workshops get you up to speed on the wetware, and mentors are on hand all weekend.

Free for accepted participants. Meals and lab access over the weekend are covered by our sponsors.

Yes. Teams get supervised access to cultured neural systems and the tooling to program them, provided by Cortical Labs and the Hopkins labs. You won't be simulating — you'll be working with the real thing.

One to four people. Apply solo and we'll help you find teammates at Friday's team formation.

We offer limited travel reimbursement and can help coordinate housing for participants coming from partner universities. Details go out with acceptances.

Applications open fall 2026

Be part of the first cohort.

Leave your email and we'll notify you the moment applications and sponsorship packages go live.