European researchers have begun work on the Neuneu project, a biologically inspired, “wet” computer designed to mimic living brain functions through chemical assembly processes and pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques.

It would be a massively parallel computer made of lipid bubbles, which are seen as a rough physical emulation of neurons, using “BZ computation,” a form of chemical computing used in molecular-computation research.

The project aims to show how a new paradigm for building computers could be practical. Molecular techniques might also be good for putting computers inside living cells — for example, to improve drug delivery so that robots could selectively detect and kill cancers.