Rüdiger Urbanke
EPFL IC IINFCOM LTHC
INR 116 (Bâtiment INR)
Station 14
1015 Lausanne
+41 21 693 76 92
+41 21 693 76 95
Office:
INR 116
EPFL › IC › IINFCOM › LTHC
Website: https://lthcwww.epfl.ch/
Expertise
coding, communications, information theory, graphical models, methods of statistical physics applied to problems in communications and computer science, codes for quantum, foundations of machine learning
Mission
Design and analysis of error-correcting codes for both classical and quantum communication, as well as the theoretical foundations of modern machine learning.
Ruediger L. Urbanke received his Dipl. Ing. degree from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, in 1990, followed by an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. From 1995 to 1999, he served in the Mathematics of Communications Department at Bell Labs, after which he joined the School of Computer & Communication Sciences (I&C) at EPFL, where he is part of the Information Processing Group.
He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2000 to 2004, served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2017, and is currently the Dean of I&C. Dr. Urbanke is co-author of Modern Coding Theory (Cambridge University Press).
His research spans the design and analysis of error-correcting codes for both classical and quantum communication, as well as the theoretical foundations of modern machine learning.
Awards:
2023 Claude E. Shannon Award
2023 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award
2021 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
2016 STOC Best Paper Award
2014 La Polysphere Teaching Award
2014 IEEE Hamming Medal
2013 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
2011 MASCOT Best Paper Award
2011 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award
2009 La Polysphere Teaching Award
2002 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
Fulbright Scholarship
My students have won the following awards:
M. Mondelli, 2021 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award
M. Mondelli, EPFL Doctorate Award 2018
M. Mondelli, Patrick Denantes Award, 2017
M. Mondelli, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2015
M. Mondelli, Dan David Prize Scholarship, 2015
H. Hassani, Inaugural Thomas Cover Dissertation Award, 2014
S. Kudekar, 2013 & 2021 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award
A. Karbasi, Patrick Denantes Award, 2013
V. Venkatesan, Best Paper Award at MASCOTS, 2011
A. Karbasi, Best Student Paper Award at ICASSP, 2011 (with R. Parhizkar)
A. Karbasi, Best Student Paper Award at ACM SIGMETRICS, 2010 (with S. Oh)
S. Korada, ABB Dissertation Award, 2010
S. Korada, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2009 (with E. Sasoglu)
S. Korada, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2008
He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2000 to 2004, served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2017, and is currently the Dean of I&C. Dr. Urbanke is co-author of Modern Coding Theory (Cambridge University Press).
His research spans the design and analysis of error-correcting codes for both classical and quantum communication, as well as the theoretical foundations of modern machine learning.
Awards:
2023 Claude E. Shannon Award
2023 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award
2021 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
2016 STOC Best Paper Award
2014 La Polysphere Teaching Award
2014 IEEE Hamming Medal
2013 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
2011 MASCOT Best Paper Award
2011 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award
2009 La Polysphere Teaching Award
2002 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
Fulbright Scholarship
My students have won the following awards:
M. Mondelli, 2021 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award
M. Mondelli, EPFL Doctorate Award 2018
M. Mondelli, Patrick Denantes Award, 2017
M. Mondelli, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2015
M. Mondelli, Dan David Prize Scholarship, 2015
H. Hassani, Inaugural Thomas Cover Dissertation Award, 2014
S. Kudekar, 2013 & 2021 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award
A. Karbasi, Patrick Denantes Award, 2013
V. Venkatesan, Best Paper Award at MASCOTS, 2011
A. Karbasi, Best Student Paper Award at ICASSP, 2011 (with R. Parhizkar)
A. Karbasi, Best Student Paper Award at ACM SIGMETRICS, 2010 (with S. Oh)
S. Korada, ABB Dissertation Award, 2010
S. Korada, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2009 (with E. Sasoglu)
S. Korada, IEEE IT Society Student Paper Award at ISIT, 2008
CONTACT
Secretariat
Muriel Bardet
Building INR 137
Station 14
CH-1015 Lausanne
Tel. 41 21 693 76 95
muriel.bardet@epfl.ch
Muriel Bardet
Building INR 137
Station 14
CH-1015 Lausanne
Tel. 41 21 693 76 95
muriel.bardet@epfl.ch
Education
EE
| PhD in EE
1992 – 1995
WashU
Directed by
Bixio Rimoldi
EE
| MS in EE
1991 – 1992
WashU
Directed by
Bixio Rimoldi
EE
| Dimplomingenieur in Elektrotechnik1985 – 1990 TU Wien
Awards
IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
2011
IEEE Hamming Medal
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
2014
Claude E. Shannon Award
IEEE Information Theory Society
2023
IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
2023
IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
2021
STOC Best Paper Award
ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)
2016
IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
2013
MASCOT Best Paper Award
2011
La Polysphere Teaching Award
2009
IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award
2002
2025
Interpolation of Quantum Polar Codes and Quantum Reed-Muller Codes
2025. 2025 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), Sydney, Australia, 2025-09-29 - 2025-10-03. p. 1 - 7. DOI : 10.1109/itw62417.2025.11240456.2023
Beyond worst-case analysis, with or without predictions
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9958.2022
On the Efficiency of Polar-Like Decoding for Symmetric Codes
Ieee Transactions On Communications. 2022. DOI : 10.1109/TCOMM.2021.3121442.Symmetry in design and decoding of polar-like codes
Lausanne, EPFL, 2022. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-8989.Polar Codes Do Not Have Many Affine Automorphisms
2022. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Espoo, FINLAND, 2022-06-26 - 2022-07-01. p. 2374 - 2378. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT50566.2022.9834782.2020
On the Universality of Low-Density Parity-Check Block Codes
2020. 54th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), Princeton, NJ, Mar 18-20, 2020. p. 86 - 91. DOI : 10.1109/CISS48834.2020.1570617344.On the dependency between the code symmetries and the decoding efficiency
2020. International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications (ISITA), ELECTR NETWORK, Oct 24-27, 2020. p. 195 - 199.2019
Displacement Convexity in Spatially Coupled Scalar Recursions
Ieee Transactions On Information Theory. 2019. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2018.2864728.Improved decoding of second-order Reed-Muller codes
2019. IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), Visby, SWEDEN, Aug 25-28, 2019. p. 534 - 538. DOI : 10.1109/ITW44776.2019.8988970.2018
When Stuck, Flip a Coin : New Algorithms for Large-Scale Tasks
Lausanne, EPFL, 2018. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-8580.The Stability Condition of LDPC Codes Under MAP Decoding
2018. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Vail, CO, Jun 17-22, 2018. p. 811 - 815. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2018.8437939.2016
Recent Advances in Capacity Approaching Codes
Ieee Journal On Selected Areas In Communications. 2016. DOI : 10.1109/Jsac.2015.2508219.2015
Sparse Probabilistic Models : Phase Transitions and Solutions via Spatial Coupling
Lausanne, EPFL, 2015. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-6625.2014
Achieving Marton's Region for Broadcast Channels Using Polar Codes
2014. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Honolulu, HI, JUN 29-JUL 04, 2014. p. 306 - 310. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2014.6874844.Analysis of Coupled Scalar Systems by Displacement Convexity
2014. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Honolulu, HI, JUN 29-JUL 04, 2014. p. 2321 - 2325. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2014.6875248.Physics-Inspired Methods for Networking and Communications
IEEE Communications Magazine. 2014. DOI : 10.1109/MCOM.2014.6957155.High Symbol Rate Coherent Optical Transmission Systems: 80 and 107 Gbaud
Journal of Lightwave Technology. 2014. DOI : 10.1109/Jlt.2013.2286963.2012
Polar Codes: Robustness of the Successive Cancellation Decoder with Respect to Quantization
2012Chains of mean field models
Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. 2012. DOI : 10.1088/1742-5468/2012/02/P02011/meta.Graph-Based Information Processing : Scaling Laws and Applications
Lausanne, EPFL, 2012. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-5524.2011
A mobile world of security
2011. IEEE 44th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2011), Princeton, NJ, USA, March 17-19, 2011.Exchange of Limits: Why Iterative Decoding Works
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2011. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2011.2111730.Information Processing and Structure of Dynamical Networks
Lausanne, EPFL, 2011. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-4976.Reliability of clustered vs. declustered replica placement in data storage systems
2011. 19th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Modelling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS 2011), Singapore, July 25-27, 2011. p. 307 - 317. DOI : 10.1109/MASCOTS.2011.53.2010
An empirical scaling law for polar codes
2010. 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - ISIT, Austin, TX, USA, 13-18 06 2010. p. 884 - 888. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2010.5513579.A Mobile World of Security
2010On the scaling of polar codes: II. The behavior of un-polarized channels
2010. 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - ISIT, Austin, TX, USA, 13-18 06 2010. p. 879 - 883. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2010.5513585.Threshold saturation via spatial coupling: Why convolutional LDPC ensembles perform so well over the BEC
2010. 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - ISIT, Austin, TX, USA, 13-18 06 2010. p. 684 - 688. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2010.5513587.Polar codes for Slepian-Wolf, Wyner-Ziv, and Gelfand-Pinsker
2010. IEEE, Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2010, Cairo, Egypt, January 6-8, 2010. p. 1 - . DOI : 10.1109/ITWKSPS.2010.5503220.2009
The compound capacity of polar codes
2009. 2009 47th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton), Monticello, IL, USA, 30 09 - 2 October 2009. p. 16 - 21. DOI : 10.1109/ALLERTON.2009.5394827.Polar Codes are Optimal for Lossy Source Coding
2009. ITW, Taormina, October 11-16, 2009. p. 149 - 153. DOI : 10.1109/ITW.2009.5351488.Polar Codes: Characterization of Exponent, Bounds, and Constructions
2009. IEEE. International Symposium of Information Theory, Seoul, June 28- July 3. p. 1483 - 1487. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2009.5205865.Statistical physics methods for sparse graph codes
Lausanne, EPFL, 2009. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-4442.Polar codes for channel and source coding
Lausanne, EPFL, 2009. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-4461.Waterfall region performance of punctured LDPC codes over the BEC
2009. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Seoul, June 28 - July 3, 2009. p. 2644 - 2648. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2009.5205927.Performance of Polar Codes for Channel and Source Coding
2009. IEEE. International Symposium of Information Theory 2009, Seoul, June 28- July 3. p. 1488 - . DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2009.5205860.Finite-Length Scaling for Iteratively Decoded LDPC Ensembles
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2009. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2008.2009580.2008
Exchange of Limits: Why Iterative Decoding Works
2008. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Toronto, July 6-11. p. 285 - 289. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2008.4594993.Modern Coding Theory
Cambridge University Press, 2008.Non-binary LDPC codes and EXIT like functions
Lausanne, EPFL, 2008. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-4111.The Slope Scaling Parameter for General Channels, Decoders, and Ensembles
2008. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Toronto, July 6-11, 2008. p. 1443 - 1447. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2008.4595226.Lower Bounds on the Rate-Distortion Function of Individual LDGM Codes
2008. 5th International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Related Topics, Lausanne, 1-5 Sept. 2008. p. 379 - 384. DOI : 10.1109/TURBOCODING.2008.4658729.Maxwell Construction: The Hidden Bridge Between Iterativew and Maximum a Posteriori Decoding
IEEE Transansactions on Information Theory. 2008. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2008.2006466.Computing the threshold shift for general channels
2008. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Toronto, July 6-11, 2008. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2008.4595227.A source coding scheme using sparse graphs: Modern Coding Theory Course Exam 2008
2008Turbo Codes in Binary Erasure Channel
IEEE Transansactions on Information Theory. 2008. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2008.917723.2007
Existence Proofs of Some EXIT Like Functions
2007. International Symposium on Information Theory ISIT2007, Nice, France, 2007. p. 866 - 870. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2007.4557333.Correction to “Multiple-Antenna Signal Constellations for Fading Channels”
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2007. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2006.887062.2006
Conservation laws for coding
Lausanne, EPFL, 2006. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-3485.2005
Finite-Length Optimization of Iteratively Decoded LDPC Ensembles
2005Density Evolution, Threshold and the Stability Condition for non-binary LDPC Codes
IEE Proceedings - Communications. 2005. DOI : 10.1049/ip-com:20050230.2004
Asymptotic and finite-length analysis of low-density parity-check codes
Lausanne, EPFL, 2004. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-3072.Maxwell's Construction: The Hidden Bridge between Maximum-Likelihood and Iterative Decoding
2004. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2004.1365262.Multi-Edge Type LDPC Codes
2004On the Distribution of Low-Weight Codewords for Turbo Codes
2004.Life Above Threshold: From List Decoding to Area Theorem and MSE
2004.2003
On Wide Band Broadcast Channels
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2003. DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2003.820036.2002
Asymptotic Analysis of Turbo Codes over the Binary Erasure Channel
2002.Achieving General Points in the 2-User Gaussian MAC Without Time-Sharing or Rate-Splitting by Means of Iterative Coding
2002. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2002.1023606.2001
The Capacity of Low-Density Parity Check Codes under Message-Passing Decoding
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2001. DOI : 10.1109/18.910577.On the design of low-density parity-check codes within 0.0045 dB of the Shannon limit
IEEE Communications Letters. 2001. DOI : 10.1109/4234.905935.Weight Distribution of Iterative Coding Systems: How Deviant can You be?
2001. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2001.935913.Efficient Encoding of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 2001. DOI : 10.1109/18.910579.2000
The asymptotic input-output weight distribution of convolutional encoders
2000.Gaussian approximation for sum-product decoding of low-density parity-check codes
2000. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.2000.866616.1999
Linear Time Encoding of LDPC Codes
1999.Concentrate!
1999.1997
On the Ensemble Performance of Turbo Codes
1997. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.1997.613020.1996
Compact description of Golay sequences and their extensions
1996.The zero-error capacity region of the 2-User BAC is strictly smaller than its Shannon capacity region
1996A rate-splitting approach to the Gaussian multiple-access channel
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 1996. DOI : 10.1109/18.485709.1995
On Single-User Coding for the Discrete Memoryless Multiple-Access Channel
1995. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.1995.550435.A Counterexample to a Voronoi Region Conjecture
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 1995. DOI : 10.1109/18.391270.An algorithm to calculate the kernel of certain polynomial ring homomorphisms
Experimental Mathematics. 1995. DOI : 10.1080/10586458.1995.10504323.1994
On single-user decodable codes for the Gaussian multiple access channel
1994. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.1994.394915.A new coding technique for the Gaussian multiple access channel at low SNR ratios
1994.1993
Coding for the $F$-Adder Channel: Two Applications of Reed-Solomon Codes
1993. DOI : 10.1109/ISIT.1993.748400.Teaching & PhD
PhD Students
Past EPFL PhD Students
Changyan Di, Cyril Measson, Abdelaziz Amraoui, Vishwambhar Rathi, Shrinivas Kudekar, Satish Babu Korada, Christine Neuberg, Amin Karbasi, Vinodh Venkatesan, Seyed Hamed Hassani, Marc Vuffray, Vahid Aref, Andrei Giurgiu, Rafah El-Khatib, Marco Mondelli, Slobodan Mitrovic, Wei Liu, Kirill Ivanov, Andreas Maggiori, Dina Khaled Sayed Abdelhadi
Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector
Xiao-Yu Hu, Frédérique Oggier, Ali Ajdari Rad, Mohamad Baker Dia, Grzegorz Adam Gluch
Courses
Advanced information, computation, communication I
CS-101
Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics as diverse as mathematical reasoning, combinatorics, discrete structures & algorithmic thinking.