Girls Who Code

The Fred Hutch Girls Who Code club is an after-school club specifically designed for high school aged girls (grades 10-12). It is organized and led by computational biology graduate students from Fred Hutch and UW. The club holds 2-3 sessions per year and meets on a weekly basis after school at the Fred Hutch campus.

Goal of Girls Who Code

The goal of the club to build a foundation in the logic and vocabulary of computer science through collaborative projects. In this past this has included bioinformatics projects related to infectious diseases and protein evolution as well as building and programming a robot to navigate a maze. We aim to explore coding and its applications in a wide variety of domains!

Girls Who Code welcomes all students who identify as female or non-binary in grades 10-12. We strongly encourage participation by students from under-represented backgrounds. 

Complete Our Online Application

  • Applications submitted by September 26, 2023 are guaranteed review for the Fall 2023 session.
  • Applications will not be accepted after October 9, 2023 for the Fall 2023 session.

Field Trips

We go on several field trips a year to expose the club members to different careers which use coding. In the past, we have taken tours of computational biology labs at Fred Hutch and met with female programmers and data scientists at Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Just Biotherapeutics, and Microsoft. 

Meet Our Lead Facilitators 

All our facilitators are junior researchers at the University of Washington and/or Fred Hutch who use computational approaches in their work and enjoy mentoring the next generation of women in science and technology!

Maddy Duran

Maddy Duran

Gene Regulatory Networks, Trapnell Lab

Genome Sciences (UW)

Iris Jia

Tongqiu (Iris) Jia

Intra-host Evolution, Feder Lab

Genome Sciences (UW)

Rachel Wellington

Rachel Wellington

Blood Development, Doulatov Lab and Hadland Lab

Molecular and Cellular Biology Program (UW)
Hematology (UW)
Clinical Research (Fred Hutch)

Contact Fred Hutch Girls Who code