Offered Theses

I regularly offer theses in the fields of probabilistic shaping, coding for high-throuput applications, and algorithms for communication. Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. A good background in information theory and channel coding are preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.

Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

Modern networked systems increasingly rely on intelligent information exchange between sensing devices and decision-making agents. Rather than sending data continuously or periodically, future communication networks aim to transmit only what matters: information that is useful, timely, and effective for achieving a specific goal.

Such goal-oriented communication is a key enabler of efficient cyber-physical systems, ranging from remote health monitoring and autonomous vehicles to industrial automation. Designing these systems requires new models that balance data freshness, communication cost, and decision accuracy.

This thesis will explore and model decision-making mechanisms for intelligent update systems where both sender and receiver actively decide when and what information to exchange. The goal is to investigate how coordinated or independent policies can improve overall system efficiency and effectiveness.

Possible directions include:

• Modeling joint decision processes between sensing and actuation agents.
• Analyzing when an agent should send (push) or request (pull) updates.
• Developing and simulating policies that account for usefulness, timeliness, and cost of communication.
• Comparing rule-based (model-based) and learning-based (reinforcement) approaches

Prerequisites

This work covers the implementation and theoretical analysis of sliding window decoding of spatially coupled product-like codes. The student will explore the performance-complexity tradeoff for eBCH component codes and precoded polar component codes under suboptimal component decoders like the Chase decoder or the SCL decoder. We consider adaptive coding for channels with state known at the transmitter and compute iterative decoding thresholds of corresponding code ensembles.

You may also contact me with your own project idea related to iterative decoding.

Prerequisites

Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. Possible areas include optical communications, particularly physical modeling and nonlinearity mitigation for single-mode fiber, and aspects of receiver design, such as receivers for channels with memory.
A good background in optical communication systems and applied information theory is preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.
Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

A foundational concept in information theory is Shannon entropy. However, Shannon entropy does not always provide sufficient flexibility when dealing with various optimization problems, robustness considerations, or scenarios where fine control over uncertainty quantification is required. In 1961, Rényi provided a parametric generalization of Shannon entropy [1], allowing for a more nuanced analysis of information measures. 

Rényi entropy has found applications in diverse fields such as hypothesis testing, machine learning, privacy and security (e.g., differential privacy), and statistical physics. The target of this project is to understand the difference between Shannon and Rényi entropy, conditional entropy, and divergence, as well as its applications in both theoretical and applied research.

[1] A. Rényi, “On measures of entropy and information,” in Proc. 4th Berkeley Symp. Mathematics, Statistics, and Probability, vol. 1, Berkeley, CA, USA, 1961, pp. 547–561.

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

Prerequisites

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

I regularly offer theses in the fields of probabilistic shaping, coding for high-throuput applications, and algorithms for communication. Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. A good background in information theory and channel coding are preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.

Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

Wireless communication links used in control and automation systems must deliver timely and reliable information despite fading and packet losses. Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) protocols -combining forward error correction and retransmissions- can significantly improve reliability. However, retransmitting outdated packets can delay fresh information, leading to performance degradation in closed-loop systems.

This thesis aims to analyze and optimize HARQ scheduling for networked control from a communication-theoretic perspective. The project will study how retransmission strategies, feedback mechanisms, and channel dynamics jointly influence information freshness and system performance. The problem will be formulated within a stochastic decision framework, such as a Markov decision process (MDP), to characterize the trade-off between reliability, latency, and communication cost.

Possible research directions include:

Designing scheduling strategies that decide between new transmissions and retransmissions; 



The thesis combines ideas from communication theory, stochastic modeling, and decision-making under uncertainty, and provides an opportunity to contribute to ongoing research in low-latency and reliable communication for cyber-physical systems.

Prerequisites

Unsourced multi-access protocols ensure that multiple users can transmit on the same physical resources without pre-allocation of resources to the different users. To avoid information loss caused by collision of messages transmitted simultaneously, we investigate how to use (adaptive) coding schemes that allow the concurrent transmission of coded messages stemming from different users with lossless reconstruction of the payloads.

The student should be proficient in communications engineering and coding theory, i.e., the following prerequisites (or similar) are minimal requirements:

• Channel Coding
• Nachrichtentechnik

Federated learning allows to train a machine learning model in a distributed manner, i.e., the training data are collected and stored locally by users such as mobile devices or multiple institutes. The training is under the coordination of a central server and performed iteratively. In each iteration, the server sends the current global model to the users, who update their local model and send the local updates to the server for aggregation.

FL is proposed to protect user's sensitive data since these training data never leave the user devices. However, works have shown that the local updates still leaks information about the local datasets. To deal with this leakage, SecAgg[1] is proposed. Secure aggregation is to make sure that the server only obtains the aggregation of the local updates rather than each individual update.

However, recent work [2] has shown that, SecAgg only preserves privacy of the users in a single training round. Due to user selection in federated learning, by observing the aggregated models over multiple training rounds, the server is able to recoverindividual local models of the users.

The goal of this seminar is to study and understand SecAgg [1], the multi-round privacy leakage it suffers and how is this problem solved in [2]. 

[1]. Bonawitz, Keith, et al. "Practical secure aggregation for privacy-preserving machine learning." proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. 2017.

[2]. So, Jinhyun, et al. "Securing secure aggregation: Mitigating multi-round privacy leakage in federated learning." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 37. No. 8. 2023.

As an optical signal propagates through a fiber, it is distorted by chromatic dispersion. On the receiver side, the signal further experiences phase noise from the local oscillator. Compensating chromatic dispersion without consideration of the phase noise enhances the latter, which is referred to as equalization-enhanced phase noise (EEPN). 

Depending on the student's interests, the thesis can focus on different aspects of EEPN, e.g., proper modeling or mitigation. 

For this thesis, the student works for Nokia, but is jointly supervised and can expect close supervision from both sides. We aim to start the thesis on 7 January 2026.

Prerequisites

Kalman filtering is one of the most prominent and widely used examples of estimation methods. The Kalman filter is a recursive algorithm that uses a series of measurements observed over time, containing statistical noise and other inaccuracies, to produce estimates of unknown variables.

It basically estimates the state of a dynamic system using a series of noisy measurements and operates in two steps: prediction, where it forecasts the next state using the system's model, and update, where it refines the estimate with new measurements.

This technique is widely applied in navigation, control systems, and signal processing for real-time data fusion and noise reduction. 

One of the main challenges in Kalman filtering, especially for privacy-preserving methods, is the inversion of matrices. To preserve privacy, computations can be done via homomorphic encryption. Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it first.

For instance, the homomorphic evaluation of Kalman filters requires efficient matrix inversions, which can benefit from tailored homomorphic encryption methods. Effective privacy-preserving Kalman filtering can thus play a critical role in applications ranging from autonomous navigation and prediction of vehicle trajectories to financial modeling.

The goal of this project is to explore and implement efficient privacy-preserving techniques for statistical data analysis, with a focus on homomorphic evaluation of algorithms such as Kalman filters and clustering.

References:

[1] D. Simon, Optimal State Estimation: Kalman, H Infinity, and Nonlinear Approaches, Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2006.

[2] M. S. Grewal and A. P. Andrews, Kalman Filtering: Theory and Practice Using MATLAB, 4th ed., Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-IEEE Press, 2015.

[3] Z. Brakerski, ‘Fundamentals of fully homomorphic encryption’, in Providing Sound Foundations for Cryptography: On the Work of Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2019, pp. 543–563. Accessed: Oct. 22, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3335741.3335762

[4] V. Vaikuntanathan, ‘Computing Blindfolded: New Developments in Fully Homomorphic Encryption’, in 2011 IEEE 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Oct. 2011, pp. 5–16. doi: 10.1109/FOCS.2011.98.

[5] S. Halevi, ‘Homomorphic Encryption’, Y. Lindell, Ed., in Information Security and Cryptography. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017, pp. 219–276. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-57048-8_5.

Prerequisites

How many ways are there to write down n nonnegative integers, all of which being strictly smaller than q, such that their sum is k? In other words, what is the coefficient of x^k in (1 + x + ... + x^(q-1))^n?

In this thesis, we are going to dive into the integer partitioning problem with a certain number of partitions and an upper bound on partition size.

The goal of this thesis is to take an already existing bound for the value mentioned above, which holds for a specific k value - and extend it to general k. 

The upper bound can then be used for proving better upper bounds in coding theory for certain metrics other than the Hamming metric.

Prerequisites

DNA Data Storage

Data storage on DNA molecules is a promising approach for archiving massive data.

In classical DNA storage systems, binary information is encoded into sequences consisting of the four DNA bases {A, C, G, T}. The encoded sequences are used to generate DNA molecules called strands using the biochemical process of DNA synthesis. The synthesized strands are stored together in a tube. To retrieve the binary information, the strand must be read via DNA sequencing and decoded back into the binary representation.

The synthesis and the sequencing procedures are error-prone, and with the natural degradation of DNA they introduce errors to the DNA strands. To ensure data reliability, the errors have to be corrected by algorithms and error-correcting codes (ECCs).

A 5min video with an overview of DNA storage: https://youtu.be/r8qWc9X4f6k?si=Yzm5sOW-a6VDnBu3

Composite DNA

Recently, to allow higher potential information capacity, [1,2] introduced the DNA composite synthesis method. In this method, the multiple copies created by the standard DNA synthesis method are utilized to create composite DNA symbols, defined by a mixture of DNA bases and their ratios in a specific position of the strands. By defining different mixtures and ratios, the alphabet can be extended to have more than 4 symbols. More formally, a composite DNA symbol in a specific position can be abstracted as a quartet of probabilities {p_A, p_C, p_G, p_T}, in which p_X, 0 ≤ p_X ≤ 1, is the fraction of the base X in {A, C, G, T} in the mixture and p_A+p_C+ p_G+ p_T =1. Thus, to identify composite symbols it is required to sequence multiple reads and then to estimate p_A, p_C, p_G, p_T in each position.

Problem description

ECCs for DNA data storage differ in many aspects from classical error correction codes. In this model, new error type gain relevance, like deletions and insertions which affect the synchronization of the sequences. Especially for composite DNA data storage, these error types received only little attention.

The most related work to this problem was recently studied by Zhang et al. in [6]. The authors initiated the study of error-correcting codes for DNA composite. They considered an error model for composite symbols, which assumes that errors occur in at most t symbols, and their magnitude is limited by l. They presented several code constructions as well as bounds for this model. In this thesis, we want to analyse a different way to model the composite synthesis method and studies additional error models. We already have some results for substitution and single deletion errors. This thesis should focus on evaluating more error models in the channel model. 

This should only roughly introduce the problem. No need to review all references. If you are interested, please reach out to me, and we can discuss a suitable direction for you.

References

[1] L. Anavy, I. Vaknin, O. Atar, R. Amit, and Z. Yakhini, “Data storage in DNA with fewer synthesis cycles using composite DNA letters,” Nat Biotechnol, vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 1229–1236, Oct. 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0240-x.

[2] Y. Choi et al., “High information capacity DNA-based data storage with augmented encoding characters using degenerate bases,” Sci Rep, vol. 9, no. 1, Art. no. 1, Apr. 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43105-w.

[3] V. Guruswami and J. Håstad, “Explicit Two-Deletion Codes With Redundancy Matching the Existential Bound,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 6384–6394, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2021.3069446.

[4] J. Sima, N. Raviv, and J. Bruck, “Two Deletion Correcting Codes From Indicator Vectors,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 2375–2391, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2019.2950290.

[5] I. Smagloy, L. Welter, A. Wachter-Zeh, and E. Yaakobi, “Single-Deletion Single-Substitution Correcting Codes,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, pp. 1–1, 2023, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2023.3319088.

[6] W. Zhang, Z. Chen, and Z. Wang, “Limited-Magnitude Error Correction for Probability Vectors in DNA Storage,” in ICC 2022 - IEEE International Conference on Communications, Seoul, Korea, Republic of: IEEE, May 2022, pp. 3460–3465. doi: 10.1109/ICC45855.2022.9838471.

Prerequisites

DNA-based data storage is a novel approach for long term digital data archiving.

Due to the unique nature of writing and reading DNA, the channel associated with these processes is still relatively poorly understood and varies over different synthesis (writing) and sequencing (reading) technologies. The task of the student is to evaluate various decoding strategies for certain error-correcting schemes tailored for the DNA storage channel.

Prerequisites

Given a parity-check matrix H and a syndrome s, the Hamming Syndrome Decoding (SD) problem asks to find a vector e, the "error vector", of Hamming weight at most t. This difficulty of solving this problem has important applications to cryptography and the best solvers are the so-called Information Set Decoding (ISD) algorithms [1], [2, Section 5.3]. When the code is defined over an extension field F_{q^m}, the error vector has the additional property that its rank over the base field F_q is also at most t. Hence, one can see this as an instance of the so-called Rank Syndrome Decoding (RSD) problem, which is also an important problem with many existing solvers [3, 4].

The task of the student will be to:
- understand the existing solvers for RSD
- apply these solvers to the Hamming Syndrome Decoding problem over F_{q^m}
- compare the obtained complexity to the existing solvers in the Hamming-metric, i.e., the ISD algorithms

[1] Peters, Christiane. 2010. “Information-Set Decoding for Linear Codes over Fq.” In Post-Quantum Cryptography, edited by Nicolas Sendrier, 81–94. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12929-2_7.
[2] Weger, Violetta, Niklas Gassner, and Joachim Rosenthal. 2022. “A Survey on Code-Based Cryptography.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2201.07119.
[3] Gaborit, Philippe, Olivier Ruatta, and Julien Schrek. 2016. “On the Complexity of the Rank Syndrome Decoding Problem.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 62 (2): 1006–19. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.2015.2511786.
[4] Aragon, Nicolas, Philippe Gaborit, Adrien Hauteville, and Jean-Pierre Tillich. 2018. “A New Algorithm for Solving the Rank Syndrome Decoding Problem.” In 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2421–25. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT.2018.8437464.

Prerequisites

In a distributed learning setting, multiple worker machines are hired to help a main server with the expensive training of a machine learning model. Each worker is assigned a subtask, from which the main server tries to reconstruct the total computation result.

In the presence of faulty or malicious workers, called Byzantine workers, a common strategy is to distribute subtasks redundantly [3]. Since the redundancy introduces large computation overheads for the workers, strategies to reduce this overhead are required. One approach is to use interactive consistency checks at the main server, which can reduce the redundancy by up to 50% [1].

The interactive consistency checks are not for free, but cause additional computation and communication cost. For specific parameter regimes, this cost is well-studied. However, it is unkown how large this cost is in general. Therefore, we ask the following research questions:

1) How much computation is needed to guarantee error-free reconstruction of the computation result?

2) How much communication is needed?

3) What is the best trade-off between communication and computation cost?

The focus of this project is to study these research questions fundamentally. That is, we aim at understanding what the least amount of communication and computation possible is. The student will analyze these questions through mathematical tools, such as graph theory or information theory. The findings shall be compared against existing schemes [1,2] to evaluate their (sub-)optimality.

[1] C. Hofmeister, L. Maßny, E. Yaakobi and R. Bitar, "Byzantine-Resilient Gradient Coding Through Local Gradient Computations," in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 3142-3156, April 2025, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2025.3542896.

[2] S. Jain, L. Maßny, C. Hofmeister, E. Yaakobi and R. Bitar, "Interactive Byzantine-Resilient Gradient Coding for General Data Assignments," 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Athens, Greece, 2024, pp. 3273-3278, doi: 10.1109/ISIT57864.2024.10619596.

[3] R. Tandon, Q. Lei, A. G. Dimakis, N. Karampatziakis, "Gradient Coding: Avoiding Stragglers in Distributed Learning", in Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 70:3368-3376, 2017.

Prerequisites

Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. Possible areas include optical communications, particularly physical modeling and nonlinearity mitigation for single-mode fiber, and aspects of receiver design, such as receivers for channels with memory.
A good background in optical communication systems and applied information theory is preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.
Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

Prerequisites

The entropy rate of a stochastic process quantifies the average uncertainty per time step. In the context of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs)—where we observe a sequence of outputs generated by an underlying Markov process—this notion becomes particularly intriguing. While standard Markov chains have a well-defined structure for computing entropy rates, the introduction of a hidden layer complicates matters significantly. The entropy rate of an HMM reflects the long-term unpredictability of its observable outputs, capturing both the randomness of the state transitions and the ambiguity introduced by the observation process.

Understanding the entropy rate of HMMs has broad implications, from speech recognition and bioinformatics to machine learning and signal processing. Despite their practical importance, entropy rates of HMMs are notoriously hard to compute exactly, often requiring approximate methods or asymptotic analysis. This challenge opens up interesting theoretical questions and motivates efficient computational approaches. In this project, we investigate how structure, memory, and noise in the model impact entropy rate, and what this reveals about the information limits of systems modeled by HMMs.

Prerequisites

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

Motivated by the cell-free and massive MIMO (multiple input multiple outputs) communication scenarios, the number of power amplifiers (PA), digital to analog converters (DAC), etc., is increased. Thus, using coarse quantized transmission reduces the channel's hardware cost and nonlinear effects. More details can be found here.

In this project, we investigate algorithms for mapping modulated data to coarsely quantized signals and compare their information rates. 

The student needs an understanding of information theory and communication systems.

This thesis is concerned with developing code constructions for a new weight function (and associated metric) on (Z/qZ)^n called the unit-burst weight, suitable for measuring same-symbol burst errors. A unit burst is defined as a vector that has some consecutive positions of ones and is zero otherwise.

Any vector v in (Z/qZ)^n can be written as a (not necessarily unique) linear combination of these bursts. The burst weight is then the minimum number of bursts that need to be added or subtracted to produce v.

This metric has a connection to the A_n root lattice, a special lattice in Z^n+1 of vectors whose entries sum to zero. More precisely, the unit bursts relate to the shortest vectors of A_n called roots, and the burst weight corresponds to the smallest decomposition of a lattice point into roots.

We have already derived some basic properties and algorithms for this new metric and now would like to find some bounds and code constructions achieving those bounds. 

In federated learning, a machine learning model shall be trained on private user data with the help of a central server, the so-called federator. This setting differs from other machine learning settings in that the user data shall not be shared with the federator for privacy reasons and/or to decrease the communication load of the system.

Even though only intermediate results are shared, extra care is necessary to guarantee data privacy. An additional challenge arises if the system includes malicious users that breach protocol and send corrupt computation results.

The goal of this work is to design, implement and analyze coding- and information-theoretic solutions for privacy and security in federated learning.

Prerequisites

I regularly offer theses in the fields of probabilistic shaping, coding for high-throuput applications, and algorithms for communication. Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. A good background in information theory and channel coding are preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.

Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

Kalman filtering is one of the most prominent and widely used examples of estimation methods. The Kalman filter is a recursive algorithm that uses a series of measurements observed over time, containing statistical noise and other inaccuracies, to produce estimates of unknown variables.

It basically estimates the state of a dynamic system using a series of noisy measurements and operates in two steps: prediction, where it forecasts the next state using the system's model, and update, where it refines the estimate with new measurements.

This technique is widely applied in navigation, control systems, and signal processing for real-time data fusion and noise reduction. 

One of the main challenges in Kalman filtering, especially for privacy-preserving methods, is the inversion of matrices. To preserve privacy, computations can be done via homomorphic encryption. Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it first.

For instance, the homomorphic evaluation of Kalman filters requires efficient matrix inversions, which can benefit from tailored homomorphic encryption methods. Effective privacy-preserving Kalman filtering can thus play a critical role in applications ranging from autonomous navigation and prediction of vehicle trajectories to financial modeling.

The goal of this project is to explore and implement efficient privacy-preserving techniques for statistical data analysis, with a focus on homomorphic evaluation of algorithms such as Kalman filters and clustering.

References:

[1] D. Simon, Optimal State Estimation: Kalman, H Infinity, and Nonlinear Approaches, Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2006.

[2] M. S. Grewal and A. P. Andrews, Kalman Filtering: Theory and Practice Using MATLAB, 4th ed., Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-IEEE Press, 2015.

[3] Z. Brakerski, ‘Fundamentals of fully homomorphic encryption’, in Providing Sound Foundations for Cryptography: On the Work of Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2019, pp. 543–563. Accessed: Oct. 22, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3335741.3335762

[4] V. Vaikuntanathan, ‘Computing Blindfolded: New Developments in Fully Homomorphic Encryption’, in 2011 IEEE 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Oct. 2011, pp. 5–16. doi: 10.1109/FOCS.2011.98.

[5] S. Halevi, ‘Homomorphic Encryption’, Y. Lindell, Ed., in Information Security and Cryptography. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017, pp. 219–276. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-57048-8_5.

Prerequisites

DNA Data Storage

Data storage on DNA molecules is a promising approach for archiving massive data.

In classical DNA storage systems, binary information is encoded into sequences consisting of the four DNA bases {A, C, G, T}. The encoded sequences are used to generate DNA molecules called strands using the biochemical process of DNA synthesis. The synthesized strands are stored together in a tube. To retrieve the binary information, the strand must be read via DNA sequencing and decoded back into the binary representation.

The synthesis and the sequencing procedures are error-prone, and with the natural degradation of DNA they introduce errors to the DNA strands. To ensure data reliability, the errors have to be corrected by algorithms and error-correcting codes (ECCs).

A 5min video with an overview of DNA storage: https://youtu.be/r8qWc9X4f6k?si=Yzm5sOW-a6VDnBu3

Composite DNA

Recently, to allow higher potential information capacity, [1,2] introduced the DNA composite synthesis method. In this method, the multiple copies created by the standard DNA synthesis method are utilized to create composite DNA symbols, defined by a mixture of DNA bases and their ratios in a specific position of the strands. By defining different mixtures and ratios, the alphabet can be extended to have more than 4 symbols. More formally, a composite DNA symbol in a specific position can be abstracted as a quartet of probabilities {p_A, p_C, p_G, p_T}, in which p_X, 0 ≤ p_X ≤ 1, is the fraction of the base X in {A, C, G, T} in the mixture and p_A+p_C+ p_G+ p_T =1. Thus, to identify composite symbols it is required to sequence multiple reads and then to estimate p_A, p_C, p_G, p_T in each position.

Problem description

ECCs for DNA data storage differ in many aspects from classical error correction codes. In this model, new error type gain relevance, like deletions and insertions which affect the synchronization of the sequences. Especially for composite DNA data storage, these error types received only little attention.

The most related work to this problem was recently studied by Zhang et al. in [6]. The authors initiated the study of error-correcting codes for DNA composite. They considered an error model for composite symbols, which assumes that errors occur in at most t symbols, and their magnitude is limited by l. They presented several code constructions as well as bounds for this model. In this thesis, we want to analyse a different way to model the composite synthesis method and studies additional error models. We already have some results for substitution and single deletion errors. This thesis should focus on evaluating more error models in the channel model. 

This should only roughly introduce the problem. No need to review all references. If you are interested, please reach out to me, and we can discuss a suitable direction for you.

References

[1] L. Anavy, I. Vaknin, O. Atar, R. Amit, and Z. Yakhini, “Data storage in DNA with fewer synthesis cycles using composite DNA letters,” Nat Biotechnol, vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 1229–1236, Oct. 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0240-x.

[2] Y. Choi et al., “High information capacity DNA-based data storage with augmented encoding characters using degenerate bases,” Sci Rep, vol. 9, no. 1, Art. no. 1, Apr. 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43105-w.

[3] V. Guruswami and J. Håstad, “Explicit Two-Deletion Codes With Redundancy Matching the Existential Bound,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 6384–6394, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2021.3069446.

[4] J. Sima, N. Raviv, and J. Bruck, “Two Deletion Correcting Codes From Indicator Vectors,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 2375–2391, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2019.2950290.

[5] I. Smagloy, L. Welter, A. Wachter-Zeh, and E. Yaakobi, “Single-Deletion Single-Substitution Correcting Codes,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, pp. 1–1, 2023, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2023.3319088.

[6] W. Zhang, Z. Chen, and Z. Wang, “Limited-Magnitude Error Correction for Probability Vectors in DNA Storage,” in ICC 2022 - IEEE International Conference on Communications, Seoul, Korea, Republic of: IEEE, May 2022, pp. 3460–3465. doi: 10.1109/ICC45855.2022.9838471.

Prerequisites

DNA-based data storage is a novel approach for long term digital data archiving.

Due to the unique nature of writing and reading DNA, the channel associated with these processes is still relatively poorly understood and varies over different synthesis (writing) and sequencing (reading) technologies. The task of the student is to evaluate various decoding strategies for certain error-correcting schemes tailored for the DNA storage channel.

Prerequisites

Given a parity-check matrix H and a syndrome s, the Hamming Syndrome Decoding (SD) problem asks to find a vector e, the "error vector", of Hamming weight at most t. This difficulty of solving this problem has important applications to cryptography and the best solvers are the so-called Information Set Decoding (ISD) algorithms [1], [2, Section 5.3]. When the code is defined over an extension field F_{q^m}, the error vector has the additional property that its rank over the base field F_q is also at most t. Hence, one can see this as an instance of the so-called Rank Syndrome Decoding (RSD) problem, which is also an important problem with many existing solvers [3, 4].

The task of the student will be to:
- understand the existing solvers for RSD
- apply these solvers to the Hamming Syndrome Decoding problem over F_{q^m}
- compare the obtained complexity to the existing solvers in the Hamming-metric, i.e., the ISD algorithms

[1] Peters, Christiane. 2010. “Information-Set Decoding for Linear Codes over Fq.” In Post-Quantum Cryptography, edited by Nicolas Sendrier, 81–94. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12929-2_7.
[2] Weger, Violetta, Niklas Gassner, and Joachim Rosenthal. 2022. “A Survey on Code-Based Cryptography.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2201.07119.
[3] Gaborit, Philippe, Olivier Ruatta, and Julien Schrek. 2016. “On the Complexity of the Rank Syndrome Decoding Problem.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 62 (2): 1006–19. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.2015.2511786.
[4] Aragon, Nicolas, Philippe Gaborit, Adrien Hauteville, and Jean-Pierre Tillich. 2018. “A New Algorithm for Solving the Rank Syndrome Decoding Problem.” In 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2421–25. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT.2018.8437464.

Prerequisites

In a distributed learning setting, multiple worker machines are hired to help a main server with the expensive training of a machine learning model. Each worker is assigned a subtask, from which the main server tries to reconstruct the total computation result.

In the presence of faulty or malicious workers, called Byzantine workers, a common strategy is to distribute subtasks redundantly [3]. Since the redundancy introduces large computation overheads for the workers, strategies to reduce this overhead are required. One approach is to use interactive consistency checks at the main server, which can reduce the redundancy by up to 50% [1].

The interactive consistency checks are not for free, but cause additional computation and communication cost. For specific parameter regimes, this cost is well-studied. However, it is unkown how large this cost is in general. Therefore, we ask the following research questions:

1) How much computation is needed to guarantee error-free reconstruction of the computation result?

2) How much communication is needed?

3) What is the best trade-off between communication and computation cost?

The focus of this project is to study these research questions fundamentally. That is, we aim at understanding what the least amount of communication and computation possible is. The student will analyze these questions through mathematical tools, such as graph theory or information theory. The findings shall be compared against existing schemes [1,2] to evaluate their (sub-)optimality.

[1] C. Hofmeister, L. Maßny, E. Yaakobi and R. Bitar, "Byzantine-Resilient Gradient Coding Through Local Gradient Computations," in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 3142-3156, April 2025, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2025.3542896.

[2] S. Jain, L. Maßny, C. Hofmeister, E. Yaakobi and R. Bitar, "Interactive Byzantine-Resilient Gradient Coding for General Data Assignments," 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Athens, Greece, 2024, pp. 3273-3278, doi: 10.1109/ISIT57864.2024.10619596.

[3] R. Tandon, Q. Lei, A. G. Dimakis, N. Karampatziakis, "Gradient Coding: Avoiding Stragglers in Distributed Learning", in Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 70:3368-3376, 2017.

Prerequisites

This work covers the implementation and theoretical analysis of sliding window decoding of spatially coupled product-like codes. The student will explore the performance-complexity tradeoff for eBCH component codes and precoded polar component codes under suboptimal component decoders like the Chase decoder or the SCL decoder. We consider adaptive coding for channels with state known at the transmitter and compute iterative decoding thresholds of corresponding code ensembles.

You may also contact me with your own project idea related to iterative decoding.

Prerequisites

Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. Possible areas include optical communications, particularly physical modeling and nonlinearity mitigation for single-mode fiber, and aspects of receiver design, such as receivers for channels with memory.
A good background in optical communication systems and applied information theory is preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.
Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

A foundational concept in information theory is Shannon entropy. However, Shannon entropy does not always provide sufficient flexibility when dealing with various optimization problems, robustness considerations, or scenarios where fine control over uncertainty quantification is required. In 1961, Rényi provided a parametric generalization of Shannon entropy [1], allowing for a more nuanced analysis of information measures. 

Rényi entropy has found applications in diverse fields such as hypothesis testing, machine learning, privacy and security (e.g., differential privacy), and statistical physics. The target of this project is to understand the difference between Shannon and Rényi entropy, conditional entropy, and divergence, as well as its applications in both theoretical and applied research.

[1] A. Rényi, “On measures of entropy and information,” in Proc. 4th Berkeley Symp. Mathematics, Statistics, and Probability, vol. 1, Berkeley, CA, USA, 1961, pp. 547–561.

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

Prerequisites

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.

This thesis is concerned with developing code constructions for a new weight function (and associated metric) on (Z/qZ)^n called the unit-burst weight, suitable for measuring same-symbol burst errors. A unit burst is defined as a vector that has some consecutive positions of ones and is zero otherwise.

Any vector v in (Z/qZ)^n can be written as a (not necessarily unique) linear combination of these bursts. The burst weight is then the minimum number of bursts that need to be added or subtracted to produce v.

This metric has a connection to the A_n root lattice, a special lattice in Z^n+1 of vectors whose entries sum to zero. More precisely, the unit bursts relate to the shortest vectors of A_n called roots, and the burst weight corresponds to the smallest decomposition of a lattice point into roots.

We have already derived some basic properties and algorithms for this new metric and now would like to find some bounds and code constructions achieving those bounds. 

A fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) scheme is an encryption scheme which enables performing arbitrary operations on plaintexts in their encrypted form.

Private Information Retrieval (PIR) is the problem of retrieving a desired data from a database while preventing the database server from finding out the retrieved data.

The goal of this thesis/project is to understand and analyze how to obtain FHE from any PIR scheme [1], [3].

References:

[1] S. Halevi, ‘Homomorphic Encryption’, Y. Lindell, Ed., in Information Security and Cryptography. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017, pp. 219–276. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-57048-8_5.

[2] Z. Brakerski and V. Vaikuntanathan, ‘Efficient Fully Homomorphic Encryption from (Standard) LWE’, in 2011 IEEE 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Palm Springs, CA, USA: IEEE, Oct. 2011, pp. 97–106. doi: 10.1109/FOCS.2011.12.

[3] V. Vaikuntanathan, ‘Computing Blindfolded: New Developments in Fully Homomorphic Encryption’, in 2011 IEEE 52nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Oct. 2011, pp. 5–16. doi: 10.1109/FOCS.2011.98.

[4] ‘Fully Homomorphic Encryption from Ring-LWE and Security for Key Dependent Messages’, in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011, pp. 505–524. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-22792-9_29.

[5] Y. Ishai and A. Paskin, “Evaluating branching programs on encrypted data,” in TCC, ser. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, S. P. Vadhan, Ed., vol. 4392. Springer, 2007, pp. 575–594.

Prerequisites

In federated learning, a machine learning model shall be trained on private user data with the help of a central server, the so-called federator. This setting differs from other machine learning settings in that the user data shall not be shared with the federator for privacy reasons and/or to decrease the communication load of the system.

Even though only intermediate results are shared, extra care is necessary to guarantee data privacy. An additional challenge arises if the system includes malicious users that breach protocol and send corrupt computation results.

The goal of this work is to design, implement and analyze coding- and information-theoretic solutions for privacy and security in federated learning.

Prerequisites

I regularly offer theses in the fields of probabilistic shaping, coding for high-throuput applications, and algorithms for communication. Please reach out if you are interested in a thesis in any of my research fields. A good background in information theory and channel coding are preferable, but the requirements generally depend on your interests.

Please include a description of your interests and corresponding academic background in your application. If you have a thesis idea, I am happy to discuss your suggestions. Also, I am available to supervise external theses as long as they are in my field of expertise.

This work covers the implementation and theoretical analysis of sliding window decoding of spatially coupled product-like codes. The student will explore the performance-complexity tradeoff for eBCH component codes and precoded polar component codes under suboptimal component decoders like the Chase decoder or the SCL decoder. We consider adaptive coding for channels with state known at the transmitter and compute iterative decoding thresholds of corresponding code ensembles.

You may also contact me with your own project idea related to iterative decoding.

Prerequisites

A foundational concept in information theory is Shannon entropy. However, Shannon entropy does not always provide sufficient flexibility when dealing with various optimization problems, robustness considerations, or scenarios where fine control over uncertainty quantification is required. In 1961, Rényi provided a parametric generalization of Shannon entropy [1], allowing for a more nuanced analysis of information measures. 

Rényi entropy has found applications in diverse fields such as hypothesis testing, machine learning, privacy and security (e.g., differential privacy), and statistical physics. The target of this project is to understand the difference between Shannon and Rényi entropy, conditional entropy, and divergence, as well as its applications in both theoretical and applied research.

[1] A. Rényi, “On measures of entropy and information,” in Proc. 4th Berkeley Symp. Mathematics, Statistics, and Probability, vol. 1, Berkeley, CA, USA, 1961, pp. 547–561.

I may not always have prepared thesis topics available. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in working on a thesis within any of my research areas.