Spencer Giddens

Biography:

Spencer Giddens is a second-year master’s student pursuing a degree in Mathematics at Brigham Young University with an anticipated graduation date of August 2020. He received a bachelor’s degree in Applied and Computational Mathematics from BYU in December 2018. During the summer of 2018, he spent three months researching physical-layer security, optimization, and error-control coding at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, joining ICE Lab shortly after returning to Utah. While in Portugal, he began working on developing a better optimization method for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of small block lengths, and he recently submitted a paper detailing the first steps of this new optimization method to the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory. In addition to LDPC optimization, Spencer is making improvements to an optimization algorithm relevant to the decoder of a space-time code for aeronautical telemetry. It is anticipated that these results, as well as the remaining steps of the LDPC optimization method, will be published in the coming months. After graduation, Spencer plans to pursue a PhD in interdisciplinary, computational mathematics.

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Projects:

Error-control Coding

• Improving optimization methods for LDPC codes of small block lengths
• Developing software to accompany theoretical results

Aeronautical Telemetry

• Optimizing decoder performance in a signal processing algorithm used for aeronautical telemetry
• Designing improved software for use by United States Air Force

Research Interests:

• Optimization
• Error-control coding
• Information theory
• Scientific computing
• Cryptography and secure communications
• Aeronautical telemetry