Random Access DNA-based Storage Systems

Abstract
We describe the first DNA-based storage architecture that enables random access to data blocks and rewriting of information stored at arbitrary locations within the blocks. The  newly developed architecture overcomes drawbacks of existing methods that require decoding the whole file in order to read one fragment. Our system makes use of newly developed coding techniques that ensure data reliability, specificity and sensitivity of access, and at the same time, provide state-of-the-art data storage capacity. As a proof of concept, we encoded the Wikipedia pages of six universities in the USA and rewrote parts of the text encoded in DNA corresponding to three of these schools. The results suggest that DNA media may be used for both archival and rewritable storage.Joint work with Hanmao Kiah, Jian Ma, Gregory Puleo, Hussein Tabatabaei Yazdi, Yongbo Yuan, and Huimin Zhao

Bio Sketch
Olgica Milenkovic received her MS Degree in Mathematics and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2001 and 2002, respectively. From 2002 until 2006, she was with the faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2007, she joined the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Her research interests are in bioinformatics, coding theory, compressive sensing and social sciences.

Olgica Milenkovic is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Dean's Excellence in Research Award. In 2012 she was named a Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) Associate, and in 2013 she was named a Willet scholar. From 2006, she served on the editorial board for the Transactions on Communication, Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Information Theory.