Coding for Medicine for High School

CODING GENE.US CHALLENGE

Coding Gene.us Challenge: Hey young scientists, Are you ready to show your creativity and compete with the brightest high-school students from across the country? Join us for the 2025-26 Coding Gene.us Challenge! Deadline for team registration: Oct 31, 2025. Final submission due: March 2026.

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News from summer 2025 -

Science Fair Top Award and Papers: Over the last summer and fall, students from our research groups did fantastic work in understanding the taxonomy of plants using pangenome analysis programs. Dr. Samanta is in the process of writing the papers, which will be available soon. In a separate project, Defne Dingiloglu from Tesla STEM High School looked for antibiotic and antitumor secondary metabolites in the bacteria Streptomyces scabiei under the guidance of Dr. Samanta and received the first place in computational biology category at Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF). You can see her report here.

Machine Learning and AI Modules: This summer, we have a new module on AI and machine learning using Python. This topic was the top suggestion in your feedback form last year. We are also again offering the two lab modules - "Learning Chemistry from Enzymes" covering the concepts of chemistry based on biochemical molecules and "Microbial Mysteries" on biotechnology. These lab classes will be held at the Bellevue college. For coding topics, both in-person classes at Bellevue College and online classes thorugh zoom will be offered so that the students from around the country can join.

Research Module: This year we are again offering the summer-long independent research program, but with one important modifications from the last year. This time, we are extending the time to Sep 30 so that the students get sufficient time to complete their research reports. We understand that the schools will start by then, but the students should have their projects completed by mid-Aug and can spend the last month in polishing up the report. For this module, we plan to have a small group of students selected based on merit and genuine interest. Please contact us for more details.

Self-learning Modules: We are also creating self-paced video versions of many of our popular modules, which will be available online in the coming weeks and months. This allows you to learn at your own convenience without having to wait for the summer. For instance, our "Calculus Meets Coding" module, which teaches R and calculus, received excellent feedback from the students. However, we often struggle to schedule this module every summer, so the new video format offers a flexible solution.

Yearlong Module: This has been an exciting year with our yearlong problem solving modules. Students can join this self-paced module any time. Each of them gets one question at the beginning of the month and then the solution at the end of the month. Dr. Samanta has been meeting the students every month through zoom. Also, we continue to improve the videos and texts of the problems/solutions based on the student feedbacks.

News from prior years -

High-school Clubs: Coding for Medicine clubs are expanding rapidly. In 2020, Leo Zou and Athulya Saravanakumar, our students from the Dulles High School in Sugarland, TX, started a Coding for Medicine club at their school. Today four more student-run Coding for Medicine clubs are operational in various high shcools, and several more clubs formed by students from our summer program are in their planning stages. If you are interested in starting a Coding for Medicine club at your school, let us discuss.

Research by Anne Grodjak: Anne Grodjak, our student from 2017, conducted excellent research for two years under the supervision of Dr. Samanta and reported the findings in this paper. Anne joined MIT in the fall of 2021.

Coding for Medicine in its Eleventh Year

Coding for Medicine is an innovative organization dedicated to teach coding skills to young people based on real-life problems. Our primary areas are biology and medicine, but we also offer interesting modules like "Precalculus Meets Coding" and "Calculus Meets Coding" to teach precalculus/calculus and coding together, and "Catching Pokemons with Coding" to teach coding to the middle-school students.

Our highly favoured high-school summer camps are in eleventh year now. Over the years, we expanded to many topics and areas. The years 2018-2021 had been particularly exciting.

Anne Grodjak, our student from 2017, conducted excellent research for two years under the supervision of Dr. Samanta and reported the findings in this paper. Anne joined MIT in the fall of 2021.

In 2020, Leo Zou and Athulya Saravanakumar from the Dulles High School, Houston, TX started a Coding for Medicine club for their school to introduce their fellow students to biology-inspired coding. This club had been a great success. If you are interested in starting a similar club at your school, please contact us.

In addition to the coding camps, we introduced a biotechnology lab module ("Tinkering with DNA") in 2018 and continued with "Microbial Mysteries" lab in 2019 to explore the microbial world. After a break due to covid lockdown in 2020, we again offered the module in 2021 at the Redmond Ridge location. We plan to offer it again this year and are figuring out the logistics.

In the Fall of 2018, we offered the online module "Calculus Meets Coding" for high-schoolers. We continued in Fall 2019, with another online module - "Precalculus with Coding and Animation" for advanced middle-schoolers and high-schoolers. This year, we have a condensed module based on those topics.

With our students from the 2017 high-school summer camp, we raised money through crowdfunding to uncover the genetic secrets of salmonberry. Research on this project is nearly complete, and we are working on the publication.

In late 2018, we initiated online classes on R and bioinformatics for college students and post-doctoral researchers.