Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020 (DDH2020) platform welcomes all those who wish to join the open-source drug discovery Hackathon against Covid-19. DDH2020 is a joint initiative of AICTE, CSIR and supported by Office of Principal Scientific Advisor, Govt. of India, NIC and MyGov.
DDH2020 vision and mission is to establish ‘Open innovation Model’ for in silico drug discovery against Covid-19 virus and will cover the various processes in drug discovery, including but not limited to, in silico screening of molecules, lead optimization and identification of drug-able non-toxic targets. The targets/tools/lead molecules identified through the process of DDH2020 will be further taken forward for synthesis followed by subsequent steps in routine drug discovery program.

Objective
Identification of drug candidates that are effective against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2- by employing a hackathon for in-silico drug discovery, followed up by chemical synthesis and biological testing.

The hackathon will have two major tracks
Track-1
will primarily deal with drug design for anti-COVID-19 hit/lead molecule generation using tools such as molecular modeling, pharmacophore optimization, molecular docking, hit/lead optimization, etc.
Track-2
will deal with designing/optimizing new tools and algorithms which will have an immense impact on expediting the process of in silico drug discovery. Novel or refined tools/algorithms from Track-2 will help develop better models for predicting ADMET in silico, thus improving screening efficiency.

Problem Statements:
PSs will be standalone challenges with well-defined boundary conditions and expected outcomes in terms of efficiency, specificity, computational power, etc. so that competing teams are well aware of the expectations and required outcomes.The proposed Hackathon will be conducted in 3 phases of 2 months each.

Timelines:
Phase 1
Release of Problem Statements (PSs): 2nd July, 2020
Registration & Submission Deadline: 31st October, 2020
Evaluation Deadline: 30th November, 2020

Phase 2
Online mentoring/handholding of selected teams: 15th December, 2020
Improvisation/Optimization of Products/Tools: 15th March, 2021
Evaluation Deadline: 15th April, 2021

Phase 3
Next round of improvisation by regrouping or collaboration: 15th July, 2021
Evaluation Deadline: 31st July, 2021
Releasing the knowledge in open source domain: 20th August, 2021