In the mini-course on Coding theory and applications from 18-19, April, 2019, the four invited speakers, Dr. Eitan Yaakobi (Technion), Dr. Son Hoang Dau (RMIT University, Australia), Dr. Van Khu Vu (Nanyang Technological University), and Dr. Tran Thi Luong, introduced to the audience the basics of coding theory as well as its various recent applications.  

Coding theory was introduced back in the forties to protect data transmitted through a noisy communication channel. Apart from communications, the theory has found its vast success in numerous important areas in the fields of computer science and electrical engineering such as data storage, memory and cache, cryptography, private information retrieval, and distributed computing. Its key principle is that data redundancy can guard information systems against failures and malicious players and/or boost the performance of the systems. The main task is to devise smart redundancy schemes that optimise a set of, often conflicting, performance metrics or provide the best trade-offs.

Apart from the two tutorials that equipped the audience with basic concepts in coding theory, the talks focused on important applications of coding techniques in distributed storage systems, DNA storage, flash and race-track memory, distributed computing, and cryptography, which are among the most active research areas in the field. The speakers also discussed several open research problems that the research community is currently working on.

Participants of the courses include both undergraduate students in their junior years as well as senior researchers who are interested in this exciting field of research.