2022 Antibody Hackathon Experience

This article was written and contributed by Nelson Solares, a student participant in the 2022 Antibody Engineering Hackathon.  

This hackathon taught me that it is possible to create a community out of complete strangers and have meaningful conversations about our reality and how science influences that conversation.

Coming into this experience I didn’t know what to expect— not because I didn’t feel

some form of excitement to be a part of a project, but, frankly, because I just don’t feel like I am

anywhere near the scientific end of the intellectual spectrum as far as the contemporary field is

concerned. No, as an Organizational Studies/Business-Sociology major, I consider myself more

of a student of the liberal arts than I am a disciple of science. However, as the contemporary

history of the liberal arts has to contend with the heavy influence of science and, more

specifically, engineering, it made sense in my mind to dive into the unknown this project

presented to me. It would also make me blush to confess that my educational plan did not, prior

to my participation in this experience, contain many bioscience courses (ironically, no more

than the required general education courses, which in today’s technical college experience is

designed to provide a simulated liberal arts experience). My interest in the past few years has

been in the liberal arts, psychology, and to some extent, theology. What could an antibody

hackathon have to offer me that a ‘core’ class in these fields could not offer me? Well, as a

student of the arts, part of my self-appointed duty is to search for ideas wherever they may be

expressed.

One of the more immediate concerns on my end was role and responsibility. What is my

role in this experience, and what are the responsibilities that befall that role? An email sent out a

week prior to the start of the event answered my questions, only to send my heart sinking a bit.

Part of my initial dismay was in how technical most of the roles listed seemed to be. Still, the

mentality of a business major is one of a ‘can-do’, not a ‘cannot-do’, so I set out to internally

whisper some positive affirmations about how well this experience can turn out to be if I just

allow myself to be present. One of the best problem-solving tools of a business major is the

ability to design our own solutions given the resources provided in any and every situation,

along with the ‘belief’ that every and any situation has a ready-made solution available or at the

very least the tools necessary to design one from scratch. Times like these are a test of one’s faith

in the tradition of a problem-solving business major.

Along with a list of roles and responsibilities emailed, was also a link to relevant

background information that could help participants benefit and potentially contribute to the

discussions and presentations provided throughout the hackathon. The webpages provided were

of great help in allowing me to feel up to speed with what was going to be covered in the

hackathon (along with the event schedule, of course). Still, it’s one thing to be given all the dots

in a drawing individually, it’s a whole other thing to connect those dots in order to form a

cohesive picture in one’s head (insecurities abound).

Speaking of drawing a picture out of dots, one of the appeals to the hackathon was the

iCn3D program (the best way I can explain it is that it’s a public graphics display program that

aims to help individuals view 3D models of antibody structures). It’s interesting to think that as

someone who is interested in the visual representation of data, the iCn3D program went over my

head initially. I had previously heard of it somewhere, yet there have been other graphic displays

that have been of interest to me. To my surprise, the program has seemingly become a very

popular tool in education when trying to visualize the architecture of antibodies and antibody

screening (at this point I should mention that I am regurgitating information more than I am

providing any form of explanation, as I will not pretend to have a solid understanding of

something until I feel comfortable teaching it to a college student). What can an antibody

engineering hackathon teach me about the arts? Well, the real-world application of a

data-driven visual representation in order to understand something that would otherwise be

unseen by the naked eye sounds like a very important lesson. On that level alone it has been an

exciting experience interacting with other hackathon participants (some of whom have extensive

personal experience working with the iCn3D program), yet there were a few other key lessons

that this experience has afforded.

Sometimes I forget that I don’t know what I don’t know, and in that respect I sometimes

seem to forget that sometimes I don’t know what a reader doesn’t know either. This whole time I

was under the assumption that the reader of this entry knows what a hackathon is to begin with.

Well, that would make two of us in that I didn’t really know what a hackathon was prior to this,

other than I had heard that term being used among computer science circles to describe a

maker-space, community-like experience for information sharing and networking. In that vein, I

suppose it would be fair to say that I am still not too sure as to what a hackathon is; not owing to

some oversight on behalf of the project supervisors, but the history of the name hasn’t really

been too important in understanding that in this context a hackathon is whatever we make of it.

At its core, this hackathon experience felt like an environment meant to share information

openly and comfortably with other participants who were interested in learning about the

project and/or contributing to the project objectives. Owing to the influence of the current

COVID-19 pandemic, this hackathon was done online through a Zoom meeting using the Slack app

and other professional social media as forms of communication (as a matter of fact, that’s

probably one of the core characteristics of a hackathon— that it’s done online [which would also

explain the computer science term]).

After the initial rounds of presentations, where hackathon participants (along with guest

speakers) explained their contributions to the discussion at the center of the hackathon, we were

split into groups. At this point, I gained an even more detailed understanding of the roles

involved in this project, and potentially what my role would be. That is not to say that the

experience was robotic and overly structured. No, once I went into my breakout room it soon

became apparent at how confused and insecure our individual team members were. Now, this

isn’t some scandalous revelation, although I almost did want to think and feel that way owing to

my own insecurities relating to an ‘outsider’ feeling I had been having throughout the

presentations as I felt to be the only non-science major in the group (which I am certain was

probably not true, even if maybe I was a part of the minority as someone that didn’t have a

strong foundation in science). To my pleasant surprise, the more experienced members of my

team quickly set my fears to rest by informing me that scientists (especially wet lab researchers,

apparently) are comfortable working in chaotic circumstances, aiming to make sense of the

mayhem (I am sure I am paraphrasing, yet that’s how cool I thought these individuals were after

they comforted my unsettled mind).

This, by the way, is another key lesson I experienced

throughout the entire hackathon event— the strong sense of community and inclusion I felt as

an ‘outsider’.

As I previously mentioned, I consider myself a student of the arts, with the liberal arts as

my particular obsession. It’s tough to say in this blog what the liberal arts are and what my

interests within this obsession are as well, yet it helps to explain what I think sets a liberal arts

education from a more technical education. In my experiences and observations, I would say

that a liberal arts institution sets to foster a learning environment whereby an individual student

can feel included in a conversation with some of the greatest minds around the world and

around time. As it relates to other students, a student of the liberal arts is also shown how the

different opinions within any particular conversation is expressed in different regions, whether

geographic or historical. In this way, a student is shown how any particular conversation can

draw certain repeating patterns of ideas to the fore, and on a more entertaining level the student

is able to notice the subtle differences in the expression of opinions owing to the different

backgrounds of participants in said conversation. In my opinion, this process differs from a

more technical college in that typically the technical college is more concerned with imparting

information to students in the hopes of allowing them to take part in a conversation, as opposed

to focusing on identifying and developing the architecture of ideas each individual student

presents in an academic conversation. How does any of this relate to the hackathon experience—

I speak for myself when I say that while interacting with the more experienced members of my

team, the part of me and/or my mind that is activated during theological/spiritual studies was

also activated. See, historically the disciplines taught in today’s colleges were ‘cults’, part of a

series of religious experiences observing and concerned with studying the ‘mysteries’ of their

time. Today a lot of the spirituality of that process of study has been smoothed out, and some

colleges, in my opinion, act more like assembly lines meant to create uniform or ‘standardized’

results.

What lesson did this hackathon experience have to offer to a student of

theology/spiritality? This hackathon taught me that it is possible to create a community out of

complete strangers and have meaningful conversations about our reality and how science

influences that conversation. I can only say that it was a very beautiful experience that allowed

me to feel like a kid again, as I learned anew what the biotech community has been up to this

whole time while I have been focused on other studies and/or living life. And I must say (maybe while

breaking grammar)--- it is very humbling, exciting, and a lot of freaking fun. At no point did I

feel like I was being talked to (and especially did I ever feel like they were talking down to me),

and instead felt like I was encouraged to talk with one another (to focus on how I might provide

something unique to the conversation). Psychologically, this broke down any of the walls of

insecurity that might have otherwise popped up had I tried to tackle some of these subjects on

my own. Even better, the presence of other participants helped to humanize the experience of

learning and developing my own perspective, which is a breath of fresh air in a time in which

technology is such a strong and dominating presence in not just education but our day-to-day

lives.

So confident did I become in connecting with this conversation that I was allowed to

present to the other teams the presentation that my team had developed. Considering that

antibodies have played such a strong role throughout this pandemic, I definitely started to see

the importance of trying to invite more individuals to hackathons like these. At a time in which

science is ever-present yet still, if we’re honest, out of reach for a good number of our population

(especially in the States), this hackathon experience provided an opportunity for me to sit down

and think more openly and honestly about my relationship with science (specifically bioscience).

Thanks to the other participants in this hackathon, I now feel like that relationship can be a

more active and fruitful experience (and an artistic one, too).