PhD Thesis - Error-Correction Codes for Reliable DNA Storage

• Title: Error-Correction Codes for Reliable DNA Storage
• Location: I3S Lab CNRS, 2000 Rte des Lucioles, 06900 Sophia Antipolis
• Supervisors: Serge Kas Hanna (Junior Professor) and Marc Antonini (Directeur de Recherche)
• Expected starting date/duration: ASAP / 3 years
• Context: With the unprecedented growth of digital data, the demand for efficient and reliable storage solutions has become crucial. In response to this challenge, DNA storage has emerged as a promising medium for next-generation storage systems due to its compactness, high durability, and energy efficiency. However, the process of storing digital data in synthetic DNA is prone to deletion, insertion, and substitution errors that may affect the sequence of nucleotides during synthesis, sequencing, and storage.

   

  This PhD position offers an opportunity to contribute to the domain of error correction in DNA storage systems. The PhD student will focus on designing, implementing, and optimizing innovative coding strategies and algorithms tailored specifically for encoding data using DNA, with a primary focus on ensuring the reliability of stored information in DNA.

• Responsibilities: As a PhD student, you will be involved in a comprehensive exploration of coding strategies for errors in DNA storage. Key responsibilities include:
  
  • Literature Review: Conduct an in-depth review of existing literature on coding for errors in DNA storage to build a strong foundation for the thesis.
  
  • Investigating New Approaches: Develop and implement novel error-correcting codes for DNA storage, pushing the boundaries of current research in the field.
  
  • Theoretical Analysis: Analyze the performance of the proposed codes theoretically, deriving guarantees on the code rate, encoding/decoding complexity, and error correction capability.
  
  • Experiments: Conduct numerical simulations and wet lab experiments to validate and refine the coding strategies.

Laboratoire I3S, CNRS, Équipe SIS (groupe MediaCoding), Euclide B, 2000 Rte des Lucioles, 06900 Sophia Antipolis, France.

• A master’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, bioinformatics, applied mathematics, or a related field.
• Familiarity with error-correcting codes or information theory.
• Excellent programming skills in Matlab or Python. Knowledge of C++ is a plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English.