International Datathon on Animal Health Organised by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH)

Author

Data Integration & Analytics Department, WOAH

Published

May 24, 2026

Welcome to the WOAH Datathon web page!

Overview

The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) invites multidisciplinary teams to participate in an international datathon on animal health data science, focusing on surveillance, risk, trade and impact assessment.

Participants will work remotely over several months to address real‑world analytical challenges using pilot datasets provided by WOAH and partners. The datathon aims to stimulate innovation, methodological rigor and decision‑relevant analytics in animal health.

The top three winning teams will share 20000€ in prize money, the opportunity to be featured in the Animal Echo and to present their work at a dedicated side event during the WOAH General Session in 2027.

Who Can Participate

The datathon is open to international, multidisciplinary teams (1–6 members), including but not limited to:

  • Data scientists and statisticians

  • Epidemiologists

  • Economists

  • Computer scientists

  • Public health and animal health professionals

Teams may include members from academia (students or faculty), public institutions, international organisations, NGOs or the private sector.

Timeline

  • Official launch: March 2026
  • Deadline for registration: May 31th 2026
  • Team work: Independent and asynchronous (remote participation)
  • Support: Documentation, data descriptions and periodic technical clarifications
  • Final submission: analytical pipeline + report on a git repo by October 31st, 2026.

Organisation and Deliverables

Each team will:

  • Select one challenge either from the list or self-proposed (subject to approval)

  • Develop a complete data science pipeline, including data processing, modelling and validation

  • Produce analytical outputs based on pilot or historical datasets

  • Document methods and results in a concise technical report

  • All code must be reproducible and submitted as a git push to a public repository (e.g., GitHub, GitLab) with clear instructions for replication.

Stay Informed

Mailing list

To stay up to date with the latest news regarding the WOAH Datathon, please register to the datathon mailing list here.

FAQs

For any general question, please check the FAQs page before contacting us.

Contact

If needed, write to us through dataintegration.dept @ w o a h . o r g with subject line “WOAH Datathon”