Total 513 words used.
When it comes to the complex skills required for 21st century data mining and discovery, it can be challenging to know how to begin a skilling journey. What question does one ask? Who can train me? Where do I find data? How do I access to enough compute?
Building off decades of education and research experience, we opened a training and research environment called the Praxis Academy where learning is always experiential and modern. We emphasize directly translatable workforce skills. At the Academy’s core are BioHackathon events where learners work on teams to solve open ended yet carefully directed problems. Skilling begins before the hackathon and continues until skills are applied to real world discovery. Proof of skills include digital badges and research products.
Here is the BioHackathon process:
- Start with a motivated human. A passionate BioHacker is identified. They bring the core question, sustained interest in the results, and motivation for all.
- Start the skilling process. Praxis AI facilitates the pre-training activities, logistics, and hackathon coordination. The goal is to sculpt the problem via the scientific method.
- Initiate the research. Phase 1: research occurs in a three ½ day, synchronous, team-based hacking event.
- Deep dive research. Phase 2: long term research after the event deepens Biohacker learning and application to real-world problems.
- Product creation and proof of the skilling process. Phase 3: scientific publications, GitLab repositories, and Digital Badges.
Example: Serendipity introduced scientists at Praxis AI with Dr. Shivani Gupta, a passionate practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine and explorer of the medicinal properties of Turmeric.
Soon it became clear that a BioHackathon would be a means to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties and teach Biohackers the cutting-edge computational skills desperately needed in our new world.
On January 27-29, 2022, Praxis AI hosted the Biohacking Turmeric BioHackathon!
When you eat turmeric, an Ayurvedic medicinal superfood, you absorb a symphony of diverse medicinal biochemical structures. Turmeric powder is primarily carbohydrate but also contains water, protein, fat, dietary minerals, essential oils, dietary fiber, and curcuminoids including curcumin.
Curcumin actions in the body are mediated through dozens of interactions with human proteins that are associated with multiple pathways. In this three, half-day BioHackathon, ~25 BioHackers collaborated in Discord and the Praxis LXP to test curcumin-gene hypotheses in 3 steps:
- Initialize data mining skilling with pretraining tutorials in the Praxis LXP with Linux VMs for computation.
- Lectures and discussions of the Ayurvedic medicine approach, known effects of curcumin, and systems biology approaches to uncovering small molecule interactions with all human genes.
- Collaboration with other creative minds to identify how curcumin works holistically at the biochemical and genetic levels.
Three research teams formed in the areas of curcumin effects on cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s. Unlike classic hackathons, our Academy event is ongoing (Phase 2) with a strong emphasis on curcumin effects on Osteoarthritis. BioHackers that continue training will receive digital badges and co-authorship on research products. For example, one BioHacker has written valuable open-source Python code that will be released in the coming weeks that scours databases for nutritional compound-gene interactions. Stay tuned for more!
Nomination Title: Praxis AI BioHackathon: BioHacking Turmeric
