The PEARL-DNA organised event, “SCDNA26: from idea to applications”, took place on Wednesday, 27 May 2026, during the Storage and Computing with DNA 2026 (SCDNA26) conference in Rome, Italy. SCDNA26 is the leading international event in the field of computing and DNA-based data storage, fostering collaboration and offering an opportunity for scientists, researchers and innovators to share their perspectives, ideas and visions of the future.
Organized by Biosistemika and accelopment as part of the DigNA portfolio, the final session brought together experts and end-users to explore the real-world potential of DNA-based data storage. Tomaž Karčnik from BioSistemika moderated the event, which discussed the challenges and opportunities of DNA data storage in various domains. DNA-based data storage has reached a level of maturity where end-to-end systems can be demonstrated but commercial applicability still needs to be largely validated. Each of the four panellists, including Carlo Wesseling from the Netherlands Army, Andrej Filipčič from the Jozef Stefan Institute and CERN, Robert Grass from Haelixa and Vincent Franceschini from SNIA, offered their unique perspective from working in their own specific fields. Questions for the panelists mainly covered the specific requirements of their fields and when and how they think DNA data storage can be applied there.
DNA data storage offers many advantages, and interestingly, each panelist cited a different favorite aspect. For Defense it is convertness, for CERN it is huge data capacity, for Data centers it is reduced total cost of ownership and for product tracking it is stability.
Obviously, DNA data storage has great potential in various fields once the technology advances another step or two.