DISCO coordinator Prof Damien Woods, postdoctoral researcher Dr Abeer Eshra and project manager Dr Kim Reilly were delighted to be invited as judges for the 2025 SciFest competition at Maynooth Post Primary. SciFest is an annual programme that seeks to inspire the next generation of STEM students, and its true to say we were amazed and impressed by the quality, curiosity and ingenuity on display. Well done to all the students who participated!
Our current digital data storage technologies are reaching 🌍sustainability limits due to high energy consumption and reliance on scarce and toxic materials, as well as having limited data integrity over time. To address these challenges, the European Commission launched the “DNA-based digital data storage” Pathfinder Challenge, funding nine projects dedicated to developing scalable and reliable approaches for using DNA as a general-purpose data storage medium. These projects form the #DigNA portfolio.
As part of our work the #DigNA portfolio is running a series of free public webinars, and recordings of the first two are now available!
Each webinar is around 1 hour, the perfect way to learn something new over a 🥗 lunchbreak or morning 🚂 commute. Check out the recordings below 👇 👇 👇
Webinar 1: “State of the Art DNA Data Storage” hosted by Robert Grass and Tomaž Karčnik 🎥 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNv72a1ugiA
Webinar 2: “Error Correction and Coding for DNA Storage” with Eitan Yaakobi and Thomas Heinis 🎥 Watch here: https://lnkd.in/dpetYypx
Are you looking for a new role in 2025? We are recruiting for Senior Postdoc and Junior Postdoc positions to work on DNA computation and DNA molecular robotics – closing date is 23rd March 2025.
Roles are full time and based at Maynooth University, Ireland. To read more and apply:
https://universityvacancies.com/maynooth-university/post-doctoral-researcher-senior-post-doctoral-researcher-moleculardna-computing
DISCO collaborator, Tristan, and his friends over on bbchallenge.org have settled the 5th Busy Beaver number, or BB(5), by finally announcing that they’ve proved BB(5) = 47,176,870. The work includes verifying the proof in the automated theorem-prover Coq, and now Tristan and co are diligently writing up this scientific tour-de-force for ultimate verification and community acceptance via peer review.
Quanta magazine writer Ben Brubaker wrote a fantastic article on the 40-year history of this problem. We urge you to check it out! It gives background including fun anecdotes about the key characters over the past decades, up to and including Tristan’s story about founding bbchallenge.org two years ago while he was a PhD student at Maynooth University.
Here’s a picture of the winning Busy Beaver Turing machine’s execution, each line in the image corresponds to a step of the machine, starting at the top and ending at the bottom after 47,176,870 steps. The machine works in binary: 1s in white, 0s in black. You’d never guess from this image that it halts!
Great opportunity to work in the cutting edge research area of DNA nanotechnology in our Maynooth University TAPDANCE lab (https://dna.hamilton.ie/). We are looking for a talented Technical Officer with expertise in techniques including atomic force microscopy (AFM), fluorescence microscopy, bulk fluorescence assays (using qPCR machine, or fluorescence plate reader), agarose /polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, as well as some experience with python code. Suitable candidates could be from an experimental physics, chemistry, molecular biology or bioengineering background. Closing date 5th January.
The first DigNA webinar is happening on Thursday .
🧬State of the Art DNA Data Storage 🧬 presented by Robert Grass and Tomaz Karcnik (Karčnik)
🗓️: Thursday, 12 December 2024, 14:00 CET
📍: Zoom meeting https://lnkd.in/d2cKwxbh
📥: get your calendar invite here:
https://lnkd.in/diY3ykBi
Find more information about the webinar and speakers please scan the QR code.