Matthieu Bloch has been appointed as associate chair for Graduate Affairs in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective January 1, 2021. He will succeed Benjamin Klein who served in this position since 2018 and who will become the next chair of the Department of ECE at Kennesaw State University. 

After earning his Ph.D. in ECE from Georgia Tech in 2008, Bloch joined the ECE faculty in 2009, where he is currently an associate professor. He was first based at the Georgia Tech-Lorraine campus and then moved to the Atlanta campus in 2013. Bloch also earned a Ph.D. in engineering sciences from Université de Franche-Comté in 2006, the M.S.E.C.E. degree from Georgia Tech in 2003, and the Diplome d’Ingénieur from Supélec in 2003. 

Bloch’s educational and research interests are in information theory and error control coding, with a focus on how to make communication systems more efficient and secure. He leads the Adaptive Communication, Decision, and Information Systems Laboratory, where he advises three Ph.D. students. Bloch has graduated five Ph.D. students and has worked with 20 M.S. special problems students, seven undergraduate researchers, two postdoctoral fellows, and four visiting scholars. He has published one book, Physical Layer Security in Wireless Communications, and he is the author of 41 refereed journal papers and 82 refereed conference papers. He holds two patents.  

Bloch has devoted much time and effort to enhancing education for both undergraduate and graduate students. Since 2017, he has developed flipped course material for ECE 3084 Signals and Systems. Bloch advises a team with the Vertically Integrated Projects program that is known as Agile Communication Architecture. The team was established in spring 2018 to develop the next generation of intelligent radios and to explore the opportunities that are possible through the convergence of machine learning and software defined radios. As part of his activities with the Decision and Control Laboratory, Bloch launched a white board seminar series in fall 2019 to build a sense of community among students and professors and to remove the artificial barriers that exist between labs and research areas. He has also developed open-access resources for ECE 6254 Statistical Machine Learning.

In his professional field, Bloch served as a guest editor for the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Information Theory this year. He is currently an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. Bloch has been elected to the Board of Governors for the IEEE Information Theory Society for the past four years and will be the society's 2nd Vice President in 2021. He has worked on technical program committees and in other leadership roles for different conferences in information theory and communications.

Bloch has been a very active citizen in the ECE community. He has been a member of the ECE Graduate Committee since 2009 and has served as its chair for the last three years. Bloch has been a member of the Strategic Planning Strategic Doing Committee, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair Search Committee, and the Faculty Recruitment Committee. He also served on the ad hoc Innovation and Education Committee and the recent Faculty Life Action Committee. He also serves as an associate member of the ECE Statutory Advisory Committee. 

Bloch was recognized with the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award in 2019 and the Richard M. Bass/Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award in 2018. The Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning has also recognized him with several honors, including a Class of 1934 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award in 2012 and being named to the Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows Program in 2012 and the Hesburgh Teaching Fellows Program in 2017.