Datathon 20252024-07-23T10:28:34+00:00

CRUK City of London Centre Datathon 2025

Are you interested in data science in cancer research? Do you want to win £25k of research funding as a team?

The CRUK City of London Centre invites PhD students, postdocs, and junior group leaders from BCI/QMUL, the Crick, KCL and UCL to participate in this free Datathon and you will have the chance to win £25k of research funding as a team to develop your project further. The winning team will be announced and invited to present at the Centre’s flagship annual symposium (27-28 January 2025).

This Datathon is a one-week competition in which teams are challenged to come up with a cutting-edge research proposal harnessing the City of London Centre’s High Performance Computational Cluster (HPCC).

The Datathon takes place from 20-24 January 2025. There will be an in-person introduction on Monday 20 January. You should then spend the week working on the challenge, before giving an in-person presentation on Friday 24 January. Support sessions will be run during the week (dates/times TBC).

How to participate?

You can either sign up either as a pre-formed team, or as an individual where the organising committee will help you to form teams. The teams must be between 3-6 people and have members from at least two of the Centre partners (BCI/QMUL, Crick, KCL and UCL). We highly recommend multi-disciplinary teams consisting of, for example, an experimental researcher, computational biologist, and clinician, etc. PhD students and postdocs should seek their group leader’s agreement prior to signing up.

Your research question needs to fit with the following themes that are relevant to the Centre research. You won’t need to have a fully formed research question until the Datathon.

  • Early onset of cancer
  • Early detection and prevention of cancer
  • Drug resistance in cancer treatment
  • Metastasis

You can use your own dataset, or you can use the dataset provided.

Prior knowledge and experience in computational biology or HPCC is not absolutely required. We will provide support during the Datathon and we will help you to form a team with researcher who has experience in computational biology if you are signing up as an individual. You will receive details and preparation materials in advance of the Datathon.

The organising committee are:

  • Prof. Nicky McGranahan – City of London Centre Theme 3 Cancer Evolution Co-Lead, UCL
  • Prof. Francesca Ciccarelli – City of London Centre Theme 3 Cancer Evolution Co-Lead, Crick & QMUL
  • Ed Martin – HPCC Lead, UCL
  • Dr. Piotr Pawlik, UCL
  • Dr. Feng Li, City of London Centre Manager
  • Veronica Dominguez, City of London Centre coordinator

If you have any questions, please contact cruk.cityoflondoncentre@ucl.ac.uk.

Sign up here by Friday 4 October. Don’t miss out on winning £25k and a chance to learn cutting edge multi-disciplinary cancer research as well as opportunities to form collaborations!

Judging criteria

The top team will receive £25k of research funding from the City of London Centre to complete their project. The funding duration will be for one year.

The teams will be judged on the final day of the Datathon based on the research question, the approach taken to addressing the question, the presentation, any result generated, their proposed use of the funding, Centre partner representation (minimum two partners collaboration is an essential criterion) and the diversity of disciplines in the team. The judges will be announced during the Datathon.

FAQ

Team

  • Do I need to be funded by the City of London Centre to participate? No, the Datathon is open to anyone at the Centre’s partner institutions.
  • If I want to participate as a pre-formed team, do we all need to sign up? Yes, all members of the team need to sign up here.
  •  As the team requirement is 3-6 people, can I sign up as a team of fewer than 6 people, for you to help us form a bigger team? Yes, you can indicate this in the sign up form.
  • If you help me to form a team or a bigger team, will I know my team members in advance? Yes, you will be informed of your team members well in advance of the Datathon and there is time for you to arrange to meet each other as a team.
  • · Is there a selection of participants? No, everyone who signs up will be allowed to participate in the Datathon.
  • As the funding duration for the winning team is for one year, do all members of the team need to have at least one year remaining in their study/contract? Not necessarily, but we expect the majority of the team to have at least one year remaining or expected in their study/contract to be able to deliver the proposal should the team win the funding.
  • As there is a requirement for the team to include more than two Centre partners, how will we receive the funding? The Centre is experienced in setting up funding for collaborative projects, for example in the case of the Centre’s Development fund scheme and PhD programmes. Partner institutions can invoice to receive funding.

Support

  • Can the team receive support throughout the Datathon? Yes, we will have dedicated sessions and support researchers and HPCC engineers available to help.
  • Will you provide computers/laptops? No, unfortunately we won’t be able to provide this, you will need to use your own computer.
  • Is a large language model like ChatGPT allowed? Yes it is allowed.
  • Will you provide physical space for the team to work together? Yes, we can help with this (please let us know in advance)
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