[boyd]

Sure -- "next-generation sequencing" (NGS) is a term for a variety of hardware platforms that allow reading the nucleotide sequences of DNA molecules.[1] This genomic data can then be used in a variety of end applications, such as looking for genetic disease markers in humans, identifying and characterizing a bacterial infection (the focus of the CDC's prize), etc. The cost of NGS has fallen dramatically in recent years (and throughout/speed increased), making it pragmatic for more and more applied use cases.

[1] The underlying hardware innovations here are varied and fairly remarkable. We focus on the software and data side, so this is not my area, but Wikipedia has a decent synopsis of current approaches: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing#Next-generatio...