Serge Kas Hanna - Junior professor at CNRS and Côte d'Azur University Communication systems
Date: - Location: Eurecom
Abstract: DNA is a promising medium for next-generation storage systems due to its high storage density, durability, and energy efficiency. However, the process of storing digital data in synthetic DNA is inherently noisy, making data reliability one of the major challenges in DNA storage. This noise, primarily biochemical in nature, introduces random edit errors—specifically deletions, insertions, and substitutions—throughout various stages of the storage process. Current limitations in DNA synthesis technology require data to be stored as a pool of many short DNA strands, emphasizing the need for short blocklength edit-correcting codes. Motivated by these factors, this talk will provide an overview of DNA storage, focusing on coding techniques and a recent result on short blocklength code construction. Short bio: Serge Kas Hanna is a junior professor at CNRS and Côte d'Azur University. Previously, he was a senior researcher at Aalto University (2022-2023) and a senior researcher and lecturer at the Technical University of Munich (2020-2022). He received an engineering degree in computer and communications engineering and a master’s degree in information and communication systems from the Lebanese University (2015), and a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University (2020). His research interests are in the broad area of information and coding theory, with a focus on coding for deletions and insertions, low-latency communications, and federated/distributed learning.
