Serge Kas Hanna

Junior Professor (Tenure-Track)

Laboratory of Computer Sciences, Signals and Systems (i3S)

CNRS & Côte d'Azur University

2000 Rte des Lucioles, 06900 Sophia Antipolis

Euclide B, Room 119

Emails: serge.kas-hanna@{cnrs.fr, univ-cotedazur.fr}

News

- September 2025: An updated version of my paper GC+ Code: A Systematic Short Blocklength Code for Correcting Random Edit Errors in DNA Storage is now available or arXiv.
- August 2025: Our paper"Marker Guess & Check Plus (MGC+): An Efficient Short Blocklength Code for Random Edit Errors" received a best paper award at the 2025 International Symposium on Topics in Coding (ISTC), Los Angeles, USA. Watch a related talk here.
- July 2025: I am co-organizing the MoleculArXiv Autumn School on DNA Data Storage, taking place on 10–14 November 2025 in Corsica, France.
- June 2025: Gave a talk titled “Novel Efficient Codes for Correcting Random Edit Error in DNA Storage” at the Storage and Computing with DNA 2025 Conference in Paris, France. (Video)
- June 2025: My student Ramy Khabbaz gave a talk on “Novel Efficient Codes for Correcting Random Edit Error in DNA Storage” at the New Trends in DNA-based Data Storage Conference in Prague, Czech Republic.
- April 2025: A short version of the paper On the Reliability of Information Retrieval From MDS Coded Data in DNA Storage got accepted to IEEE ISIT 2025.
- February 2025: Gave an invited talk titled “Short Blocklength Codes for Correcting Random Edit Errors in DNA Storage” at the Information Theory and Applications (ITA) Workshop in San Diego, USA.
- February 2025: Now available on arXiv: On the Reliability of Information Retrieval From MDS Coded Data in DNA Storage.
- December 2024: Gave an invited talk titled "Short Blocklength Codes for Correcting Random Edit Errors" at the COMSYS seminar at EURECOM in Sophia Antipolis, France.
- May 2024: A short version of the paper Approximate Gradient Coding for Privacy-Flexible Federated Learning with Non-IID Data got accepted to EUSIPCO 2024.
- May 2024: Gave a plenary talk titled "Error Correction Codes for DNA storage" at the 2024 MoleculArXiV workshop in Nice, France.
- April 2024: A short version of the paper Short Systematic Codes for Correcting Random Edit Errors in DNA Storage got accepted to IEEE ISIT 2024.
- April 2024: Now available on arXiv: Approximate Gradient Coding for Privacy-Flexible Federated Learning with Non-IID Data.
- February 2024: Now available on arXiv: Short Systematic Codes for Correcting Random Edit Errors in DNA Storage.
- November 2023: Started a new position as a Junior Professor (Tenure-Track) with CNRS and Côte d'Azur University.
- April 2023: The paper Optimal Codes Detecting Deletions in Concatenated Binary Strings Applied to Trace Reconstruction got accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions in Information Theory.
- April 2023: The paper Fast and Straggler-Tolerant Distributed SGD with Reduced Computation Load got accepted to IEEE ISIT 2023.
- April 2023: Gave an invited talk titled “Optimal Codes Detecting Deletions Applied to Coded Trace Reconstruction” at the I3S Seminar in Côte d'Azur University, Sophia Antipolis, France.
- March 2023: Gave an invited talk titled “Coded Trace Reconstruction Over Channels with Small Deletion Probabilities” at the GdR ISIS Workshop on Advances in DNA Storage in Paris, France.
- February 2023: The paper Codes Correcting Burst and Arbitrary Erasures for Reliable Low-Latency Communication got accepted to IEEE ICASSP 2023.
- February 2023: Gave an invited talk titled “Deletion-detecting Codes Applied to Coded Trace Reconstruction” at the Information Theory and Applications (ITA) Workshop in San Diego, USA.

Short Bio

Serge Kas Hanna is a junior professor with 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 Lebanese University (2015), and a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University (2020). He is the co-recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2025 International Symposium on Topics in Coding (ISTC), Los Angeles. His research interests are in the broad area of information and coding theory, with a focus on coding for deletions and insertions, DNA-based data storage, low-latency communications, and federated/distributed machine learning.