Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Matthieu Bloch received the 2026 IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award.

The award recognizes outstanding papers from the previous three calendar years that lie at the intersection of communications and information theory. Bloch and his co-authors—Onur Günlü (University of Siegen), Rafael F. Schaefer (University of Siegen), and Aylin Yener (The Ohio State University)—were recognized for their paper, “Secure Integrated Sensing and Communication.”

Published in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory in 2023, the paper examines how wireless systems can simultaneously sense their surroundings and send information while minimizing the risk of sensitive information being exposed to unauthorized parties.

This marks the second time Bloch has received the award. He first received it in 2011 for his paper, “Wireless Information-Theoretic Security,” which has been cited over 2200 times since its publication.

“I’m honored to receive this award for a second time,” Bloch, who is currently the associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Engineering, said. “It’s especially rewarding to see that ideas developed with my collaborators over a decade continue to influence research on future wireless systems.”

The paper centers on integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), an emerging area of wireless communications research. In ISAC systems, devices use the same signals both to communicate and to gather information about their environment. This approach promises improved network performance, including enhanced localization and awareness of surrounding conditions.

The research shows that, although integrating sensing and communication can improve system performance, it can also create new security vulnerabilities because sensing activities may inadvertently reveal information. The authors demonstrated that balancing reliable communications, sensing performance, and security requires techniques that address all three objectives simultaneously.

A Georgia Tech ECE alumnus, Bloch earned an M.S. in 2003 and a Ph.D. in 2008. He also earned a Ph.D. in engineering science from the Université de Franche-Comté in France in 2006.

He spent a year as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame and joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in July 2009, starting at the Georgia Tech Lorraine campus in Metz, France. He moved to the main Atlanta campus in 2013.