Purple Drop: Building a DNA Computing and Storage Platform

Co-Mentors: Professor Mayuresh Kothare, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering; Professor Mark Arnold, Computer Science and Engineering

2025 Impact Fellows:
Aaron Colon '27
Jonathan Kim '27
Declan Tabor '27

Project Description:

Can DNA be the next revolution in computing and data storage?

We are creating a lab-on-a-chip system that uses open-source software and hardware to manipulate droplets of water containing DNA to process binary information like an electronic computer, but with much higher data density. By sequencing the movement, heating, and cooling of the droplets on a platform called "Purple Drop," we hope to precisely control the hybridization of the DNA strands and process information in the form of bits.  Several aspects of this project have progressed over the last three years, but the unsolved challenge that we will focus on this year is how to read the information encoded by the DNA back into an electronic computer.