Building Everything with Nothing – Harnessing Nix for Bioinformatics

I will share how adopting Nix transformed my bioinformatics practice, turning fragile, environment‑dependent pipelines into reliable, reproducible workflows. I will walk the audience through the practical challenges of traditional Docker‑centric setups, introduce the core concepts of Nix and its package collection (nixpkgs), and explain how tools such as rix and rixpress or bionix simplify data analysis workflows. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies for managing development environments, rapid prototyping, and generating Docker images directly from Nix expressions—complete with tips, tricks, and curated resources to lower the barrier to adoption. Whether you’re unfamiliar with Nix or have found it intimidating, this session aims to inspire a shift toward reproducible, maintainable bioinformatics pipelines.