Highlights
- The National Science Foundation obligated $749,999 to Arizona State University for DNA-based data storage research running October 2026 through September 2030.
- Principal investigator Hao Yan aims to transform living cells into rewritable memory systems, moving beyond current write-once DNA storage limitations.
- The project targets applications in environmental monitoring and personalized medicine, with K-12 and undergraduate education components built in.
- The award falls under NSF's Foundations of Emerging Technologies program, which funds post-silicon computing research.
Arizona State University landed a $749,999 federal grant to engineer living cells into rewritable data storage systems, according to an NSF award record posted to the agency's public database.
Principal investigator Hao Yan leads the project, titled "FET: Toward Rewritable and Distributed In Vivo DNA Data Storage Networks." The award runs from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2030, and comes from NSF's Foundations of Emerging Technologies program.
The core technical problem the project addresses is that existing DNA storage methods are largely write-once, comparable in the abstract to old optical disc formats. Yan's team aims to establish what the award record calls an "Active In Vivo Storage" framework, transforming the living genome from a passive archival ledger into a dynamic computational register that can record, erase, and update information directly within a cell's genetic code.
The NSF abstract frames the work as advancing "post-silicon computing" and cites applications in environmental monitoring and personalized medicine. The award also funds educational outreach, including virtual reality modules for K-12 students and research training for undergraduates.
ASU, listed in the award record under a Scottsdale, AZ address, has been a consistent NSF recipient in recent years. The agency separately awarded the university $90.8 million in 2023 to build what ASU described as the world's first compact X-ray free electron laser, the largest NSF research award in the university's history at that time.
Why does rewritable DNA storage matter for computing?
Current silicon-based hard drives face physical and energy limits as global data volumes grow. DNA offers far higher storage density and longevity, but most existing approaches can only write data once. Yan's project targets that bottleneck directly, engineering cells to function as self-maintaining memory that can be updated, which the NSF abstract describes as creating "Active Molecular Memory."
The award record is publicly searchable at NSF AwardSearch under Award ID 2614937. No start-of-project milestone dates are listed beyond the Oct. 1, 2026, period start.
Sources
Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.
- nsf.gov retrieved 12/07/2026 01:22
- news.asu.edu retrieved 12/07/2026 01:22
Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 12/07/2026 01:22. Every claim traces to a source.
