How to Organise a Hackathon for Animal Breeding

Recent developments in omics technologies (such as genomics and transcriptomics) provide the research community with new tools to rethink breeding and to take advantage of improved knowledge of the relationship between the genome and phenome, such as epigenetics.

The GEroNIMO project aims to provide pigs and chicken breeders with new and innovative selection methods that account for genome and epigenome information. Implementation and execution of new selection methods require 360° perspective on what new genomic technologies can bring, and it can benefit from innovative and out-of-the-box thinking. To facilitate this, a hackathon was organised to bring master's and PhD students from different backgrounds in Europe together to tackle this challenge.