Ragnar Thobaben

Ragnar Thobaben’s research focuses on reliability in communication and learning systems. Reliability in a communication system refers to the system’s ability to guarantee error-free transmission in the presence of disturbances, while at the same time utilizing the available resources like energy, time, and bandwidth efficiently to guarantee a high rate of reliable communication. Reliability is, therefore, a key prerequisite for today’s communication infrastructures that enable many aspects of our daily lives, including smart grids, smart transportation systems, and smart cities. Here, the research in Ragnar’s group has contributed various solutions that guarantee reliable and efficient communication close to the theoretical limits, enable provably secure and confidential communication, and increase the systems’ resilience against adversarial attacks. More recently, Ragnar’s research has also studied the reliability of learning algorithms. Insights from this work will help us to design learning systems that exhibit improved robustness by design. This is especially relevant in critical use cases where the trustworthiness of learning algorithms is essential.