Award
Mehdi Saligane receives 2026 DARPA Young Faculty Award
Sep 23, 2026 · Brown University
Prof. Mehdi Saligane has received a 2026 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award for the project "CMOS-Addressable DNA Random Access Memory."
The project aims to combine the durability and density of molecular data storage with the electronic programmability of silicon. The team will explore a hybrid memory in which silicon chips control how information stored in DNA is written, accessed, modified, and erased, moving DNA storage beyond long-term archiving toward electronically addressable memory.
The award provides up to $719,358 in research support over two years, with a conditional third year.