NUS Computing PhD student wins international DNA data storage decoding challenge in France
NUS School of Computing PhD student Puru Sharma has won the Sequencing & Decoding Challenge at the MoleculArXiv Workshop on DNA Data Storage, held in Corsica, France.
The international workshop was organised by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Institut d’Études Scientifiques de Cargèse (IESC), and brought together leading researchers from academia and industry working at the frontier of molecular data storage.
The Sequencing & Decoding Challenge was the flagship competitive event of the workshop. Participants were given DNA sequences containing encoded digital data, with the objective of fully recovering the original file using the fewest possible DNA strands.
Puru emerged champion by applying a combination of algorithms developed through recent research collaborations with fellow NUS PhD students Gary Goh and Zhenhao Gu, under the supervision of Professor Wong Weng-Fai. The techniques draw on two recent publications that advance error-resilient and efficient decoding strategies for DNA-based data storage.
“Winning the decoding challenge was particularly affirming,” Puru shared. “It allowed participants to benchmark different approaches in a very concrete way, and seeing our recent work at NUS come out on top felt awesome.”
A uniquely interdisciplinary research environment
Beyond the competition itself, the workshop provided a rare opportunity for deep, domain-specific exchange.
“At traditional computer science conferences, I usually encounter only a handful of researchers working in my specific area,” Puru noted. “Here, everyone was an expert in DNA-based data storage. As a computer science researcher, it was especially exciting to speak with colleagues from biology and chemistry who are approaching the same problems from very different angles.”
The MoleculArXiv workshop aims to accelerate progress in DNA-based data storage, a rapidly evolving field that explores the use of synthetic DNA as an ultra-dense, long-term medium for digital information.
Puru’s achievement highlights the growing impact of NUS Computing’s research in emerging interdisciplinary domains, and reflects the strength of collaborative doctoral research at the School.
🔗 Related publications:
• IEEE Xplore
• Cell Press / iScience
