Join Our Webinar: Chemical Synthesis of DNA - From Solid-Phase to Large-Scale Libraries

Martin Jost

Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Kilobaser

Martin Jost is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Kilobaser, where he contributed to the development of a personal desktop DNA and RNA synthesizer based on microfluidic chip technology. He studied molecular biology and informatics at Graz University of Technology and the University of Graz. In 2013, he co-founded the Open Biolab Graz, Austria (OLGA), a community laboratory for molecular biology and biohacking, where the idea for Kilobaser emerged from the founders' own frequent need for DNA primers. Within the DigNA portfolio, Kilobaser is a partner in the DNAMIC project, contributing decentralized on-site oligonucleotide synthesis capabilities for DNA-based data storage applications.

Mark Somoza

Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Vienna

Mark Somoza is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Vienna. His research is in nucleic acid chemistry and chemical biology, focusing on large-scale synthesis of nucleic acids using photolithographic approaches and the applications of the resulting microarrays and libraries, including digital data storage in DNA, nucleic acid-binding proteins, spatial transcriptomics, and CRISPR-Cas systems. He is a partner in DiDAX, part of DigNA – a portfolio of projects funded under the 2022 EIC Pathfinder challenge: DNA-based digital data storage. He is also a co-founder of Vienna-based Helices Biological Photolithography, a company that manufactures equipment for photolithographic nucleic acid synthesis.