git clone https://github.com/uchicago-cs/chisubmit.git
git checkout -b my_dev_branch origin/backend
src/chisubmit/backend/webapp/db_create.py
src/chisubmit/backend/webapp/run.py

It is likely to die for lack of python modules. Use a virtualenv and include these modules and their dependencies:

flask
flask-sqlalchemy
python-ldap
wtforms_json
pytz
python-dateutil