Chicago, IL 60611 United States
Overview
Ideathon will be structured to facilitate focused discussion and create collaborative research projects at the interface between biology and mathematics, theory, and computation.
Participants will:
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Introduce their expertise to one another via lightning talks and individual sharing
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Contribute their vision concerning unsolved problems facing their respective fields
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Organize into teams to address the most promising collaborative approaches
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Summarize research plans they think are most likely to be successful
Workshop participation will be limited. Attendance will be balanced equally between experimental and theoretical approaches, and will be distributed equally across different career stages. Early career participants are especially encouraged to apply.
Teams will have the opportunity to return through NITMB’s Focused Research Award Program to continue their work together.
Schedule
August 10 2026 Monday
8:30 am - 9:00 am
Breakfast
9:00 am - 9:10 am
Introduction and Welcome
9:10 am - 10:00 am
First Round of Introductions (2 minute lightning talks)
10:00 am - 10:15 am
Coffee break
10:15 am - 11:15 am
Second Round of Introductions (2 minute lightning talks)
11:15 am - 11:45 am
Group chats, Session 1
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunch and general discussion
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Group chats, Session 2
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Group chats, Session 3
2:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Coffee break
2:15 pm - 5:00 pm
Full group brainstorming and project assigning
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Reception with food and drinks
August 11 2026 Tuesday
8:30 am - 9:00 am
Breakfast
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Groups Meet
10:30 am - 10:45 am
Coffee break
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Groups continue to meet
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunch and general discussion
1:00 pm - 2:45 pm
Groups continue to meet
2:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Coffee break
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Groups continue to meet
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Brief progress reports from groups
5:00 pm
Groups continue to meet if they want (dinner on your own)
August 12 2026 Wednesday
8:30 am - 9:00 am
Breakfast
9:00 am - 9:30 am
All groups meet, overview of format for final “report” (a FRGA proposal)
9:30 am - 9:45 am
Group picture and evaluation
9:45 am - 12:00 pm
Groups continue to meet
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunch and general discussion
1:15 pm - 3:00 pm
Group presentations, final feedback from all groups (Part I)
2:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Coffee break
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Group presentations, final feedback from all groups (Part II)
5:00 pm
Ideathon ends
Participants
Organizers
- Rosemary Braun – Northwestern University/NITMB
- Yogesh Goyal – Northwestern University/NITMB
- William Kath – Northwestern University/NITMB
- Andrew Miri – Northwestern University/NITMB
Participants
- Nazanin Ahmadi Daryakenari – Brown University
- Ravi Allada – University of Michigan
- Sheida Amoukazemi – UT Southwestern Medical Center
- Margaux Asclipe – University of Montreal
- Teja Bollu – Salk Institute
- Waverly Carabba – Tufts University
- Anthony Cesnik – Biohub
- Xiaolong Chen – University of California, San Diego
- Aloha Das – Brown University
- Sadia Ferdousi – Utah State University
- Chad Giusti – Oregon State University
- Dan Grimes – University of Oregon
- Joe Hibdon – Northeastern Illinois University
- Oliver Inge – Harvard Medical School
- Derek Janssens – Van Andel Institute
- Alexander Kunin – Creighton University
- Milton Lin – NITMB Fellow
- Brandon Logeman – University of Kentucky
- Tim Machado – University of Pennsylvania
- Md Shahriar Mahmud – Iowa State University
- Alejandra Martinez Blancas – The University of Texas at El Paso
- Rohan Mehta – Elmhurst University
- Michael Mendelson – Columbia University
- Vilas Menon – Columbia University
- Grace Merel – New York University
- Jonathan Michaels – York University
- Subhashis Natua – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Thoon Nguyen – University of California, Riverside
- Lauren Nichols – University of Pittsburgh
- Tomohiro Ouchi – University of Washington
- Binod Pant – Northeastern University
- Nicholas Pratt – University of California Merced
- Rachel Porter – Stanford University
- Dean Pospisil – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Ryan Ripsman – University of British Columbia
- Ayantika Saha – Boston University
- Manish Sarkar – Case Western Reserve University
- Aaron Schirmer – Northeastern Illinois University
- Li Shen – NITMB Fellow
- Wenzheng Shi – Allen Institute
- Apoorva Singh – Columbia University
- Kevin Slote – Clarkson Center for Complex Systems Science
- Guanhua Sun – Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
- Ashni Vora – Rockefeller University
- Ezra Winter-Nelson – Columbia University
- Martin Wuehr – Princeton University
- Wenhao Zhang – University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center