2025 JUDGES GUIDE
OVERVIEW
Thank you for volunteering to be a judge at the 2025 Harvard Rare Disease Hackathon, sponsored by the National Organization for Rare Disorders. We greatly appreciate your support toward our mission of raising awareness for rare diseases, and we are excited to have you on our panel of judges! This guide will provide you with information regarding the hackathon logistics and your role as a judge.
LOCATION & TIMING
Judging for the 2025 Hackathon will take place on Sunday, March 2, 2025, from 3–7 PM at Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex, 150 Western Ave, Boston, MA 02134. Dinner will be provided for participants and judges.
FLOWCHART
This flowchart outlines the judging process. We will have a preliminary and a final round of judging.
PRELIMINARY ROUND (3–5 PM)
We are separating teams along three tracks representing the patient’s journey: genomic diagnostics, symptom management, and therapeutics. Within each track, teams will be split among two judging rooms for the preliminary round. We anticipate an average of 10 teams per judging room.
Each preliminary judging room will have two judges — room assignments will be released before the hackathon. The preliminary round will last two hours. Depending on the problem statement chosen submissions will either consist of a slide deck of at most 20 slides OR a GitHub repository accompanied by a slide deck of at most 10 slides. Due to the volume of teams, there will be no presentation for the preliminary round, only the submitted deliverables.
For each team, the two judges in a room will independently evaluate the team’s submission according to the rubric for nine minutes. In the interest of security and transparency, judging feedback will be anonymized prior to release after the hackathon. After evaluating each of the projects, the two judges will deliberate to select the best submission from their room to proceed onto the final round.
FINAL ROUND (5:15–7:00 PM)
In the final round, the top two teams from each track will present to the full panel of 12 judges. Presentations will each last ten minutes with five minutes for questions. Judges will independently evaluate each team’s presentation based on the rubric.
Due to the increased number of judges, there will be no deliberation for the final round; instead, each team’s final score will be an aggregate of the overall scores with the scores of the respective track’s judges counting double.
RUBRIC CRITERIA
For each category, rate the team’s execution on a scale of 1–10 where 10 is the highest score.
Relevance: Does this project address the unique challenges posed by rare diseases?
Impact: What potential for impact does this project have?
Novelty: Does this project approach the prompt with creativity and unique thinking?
Feasibility: How tractable would it be to implement the project?
Scalability: Does the project address the challenges of accessibility on a global scale?
Presentation: Does this project clearly and persuasively communicate its impact?