Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Matthieu Bloch received the IEEE Joy Thomas Tutorial Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society.

He and his co-authors were recognized for their paper, “An Overview of Information-Theoretic Security and Privacy: Metrics, Limits and Applications,” which provides a comprehensive tutorial on foundational contributions to information-theoretic security.

The paper adopts an integrative perspective, detailing key security metrics such as secrecy and privacy, the methodology behind information-theoretic approaches, and the system design principles that emerge from them. It also explores the techniques that enable information-theoretic security to be applied in communication and computing systems.

Additionally, the authors emphasize the dual importance of fundamental limits and coding techniques in the design of secure communication systems.

Bloch, who also serves as the College of Engineer’s associate dean for Academic Affairs, is the inaugural winner of the award alongside his co-authors.

The IEEE Joy Thomas Tutorial Paper Award recognizes publications that expose subjects in information theory to a broad audience and stimulate interest and engagement in them.

Bloch came to Georgia Tech as a graduate student, earning his M.S. in electrical and computer engineering in 2003, and later a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech ECE in 2008. He joined Georgia Tech as faculty at the Lorraine campus in Metz, France in 2009, and in 2013, he moved to the main campus in Atlanta.

Prior to that he received the engineering degree from Supélec. In 2006, he received a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the Université de Franche-Comté. Bloch spent a year as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame before returning to Georgia Tech in 2009. From January 2021 to January 2024,  Bloch was  the associate chair for Graduate Affairs in ECE.