Welcome message
Dear ISTC Participant,
As a researcher with a deep love of error correcting codes, I love to attend the International Symposium on Topics in Coding (ISTC). At ISTC 2023 in Brest, it was so fun to see the exciting advances in LDPC codes, polar codes, quantum error correction, coding for 5G and 6G, short-block-length codes, shaping, exploiting automorphisms, decoder optimization, and so much more. Also, there is nothing like giving a talk to a room filled with researchers who understand exactly what you are talking about and why it is important. When the ISTC team asked me to bring ISTC to Los Angeles for 2025, I was more than happy to do my part for this conference and our community.
Thanks to your amazing papers, our program for ISTC 2025 presents advances in convolutional codes, low-density parity-check codes, polar codes, algebraic codes, coding for storage, coding for optical channels, quantum error correction, random access, shaping, efficient implementations, graphical structure of codes, and, of course, encoders and decoders enhanced by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks. In addition to the technical program, don’t miss out on the Monday evening reception, the Wednesday excursions to a scavenger hunt at the Getty Center or the Santa Monica Pier, and Thursday’s Banquet.
Many people helped make this conference a success, and I am deeply grateful to everyone. The Technical Program Committee provided prompt reviews under the careful leadership of Stephan ten Brink and the TPC co-chairs Laurent Schmalen, Charbel Abdel Nour, and David Mitchell. Stefan Weithoffer and Matthieu Arzel made sure your papers get into IEEE Xplore. In addition to serving as the Finance Chair, Lara Dolecek prepared the amazing program booklet. Henry Pfister, Gianluigi Liva, and Sebastian Cammerer broke new ground with an implementation competition. Semira Galijasevic kept the website looking fantastic and up to date with help from Ava Asmani and Arsh Dhaliwal. Several UCLA staff and students were essential to making the conference a success including Myrna Reneau, Michel Campbell, Brenda Ruiz, Tamar Rotstein, Michael Kasuyama, Erkki Corpuz, Janet Contreras, Maggie Cazares, Brianna Casey, Cynthia Moraga, Julie Ramirez, and Lev Tauz.
I hope you have a great ISTC here at UCLA!
Warm regards,
Richard Wesel
ISTC General Chair