David Mitchell

David G. M. Mitchell

IFT Professor of Telecommunications · New Mexico State University

Research in digital communications, machine learning, and quantum computing, with emphasis on error control coding and information theory. NSF CAREER awardee, 3 U.S. patents, 100+ peer-reviewed publications.

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David G. M. Mitchell received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, in 2009. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Mexico State University and holds the IFT Professorship in Telecommunications. He previously held Visiting Assistant Professor and Post-Doctoral Research Associate positions in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He has also held visiting research positions at San Diego State University, the Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems at TU Dresden, the Communication Theory Laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Signal Theory and Communications Department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and the Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke University.

He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and his research interests lie in the areas of digital communications, machine learning, and quantum computing, with emphasis on error control coding and information theory. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2022 — NSF's most prestigious award for early-career faculty — the 2019 NMSU Early Career Award for Exceptional Achievements in Creative Scholarly Activity, and four best paper awards. He is also the recipient of the 2019 New Mexico EPSCoR Mentor Award. He holds 3 U.S. patents and has published over 100 peer-reviewed IEEE journal and conference articles gathering more than 2,000 citations. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications (2025–present), having previously served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2020–2024).

Available positions

Several open research positions in our group — PhD and undergraduate — in data compression, machine learning, information theory, and quantum error correction. Get in touch if you're interested.

▶ Watch: NMSU Research & Creativity Week feature on our group

News

2026
Jul 21

Six papers accepted to IEEE Quantum Week — the IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE):

  • "Reinforcement-Learning-Guided Multi-Branch Decoding of Quantum LDPC Codes"
  • "Q-Learning Search over Voltage-Labeled Covers for Weight-Six Bivariate-Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes"
  • "Collision-Voltage Design of Directional Covers for Bivariate Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes"
  • "Quaternary Partial-Decimation Soft-Hard BPGD for Quantum LDPC Codes"
  • "Base-Preserving APM/Voltage Lifts of Bivariate Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes"
  • "High-Performance Reinforcement-Learned Belief-Propagation Decoding of Quantum LDPC Codes"

Congratulations to all the students and postdocs.

Jul 20

Two papers accepted to the IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW):

Jun 23

Enjoyed delivering the tutorial, "Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes: Introduction and Design Considerations," at NASIT 2026.

Jun 22

Had a great week co-organizing the 2026 IEEE North American School of Information Theory — the week was filled with fantastic tutorials spanning information theory and wonderful student participation.

Apr 22

Wrapped up this semester's LEGO Engineering Club with 40 elementary and middle school kids — this session's theme was archaeology, with teams building and programming inventions (including a ground-penetrating radar and communications hub), then demoing and presenting their projects to parents. Running it again this fall!

LEGO Engineering Club, archaeology theme, Spring 2026
Apr 15

Traveling to present a keynote talk, "Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes: Introduction and Design Considerations," at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) workshop on combinatorial coding theory.

Apr 2

Paper, "Design Considerations for Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes Under Decoding Latency Constraints," accepted for publication in IEEE BITS the Information Theory Magazine.

Feb 9

Traveling to the Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA) to present our work on learning to decode quantum LDPC codes.

Jan 1

New paper, "Structural Analysis of Generalized Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes," published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

2025
Oct 25

Had a great day representing the College of Engineering at the Las Cruces Spooky Science Festival — thanks to Cabe Robertson and Yair Barraza for explaining our projects to over 600 future engineers.

Spooky Science Festival 2025
Oct 20

At the International Telemetering Conference with Cabe Robertson and Andrew Cummins — our paper on post-quantum cryptography for aeronautical telemetry won second place student paper award.

ITC 2025
Aug 15

Awarded supplemental NSF funding for our CAREER project, investigating how error-correcting codes improve calibrated uncertainty in generative AI models.

Jun 28

New paper, "Enhancing Belief Propagation Decoding of Polar Codes: A Reinforcement Learning Approach," published in IEEE Communications Letters.

Jun 17

US Patent 12,334,954 B1 issued for a threshold-based min-sum algorithm lowering error floors of quantized LDPC decoders.

2024
Dec 15

Wrapped a great sabbatical stop visiting Dr. Henry Pfister at Duke University, working on quantum error correction at the Rhodes Information Initiative.

Jul 1

Congratulations to Behrooz Mosallaei for defending his MSEE thesis on smart-grid resilience with 5G — he begins a Ph.D. at NJIT.

Apr 3

Invited talk at the Munich Workshop on Shannon Coding Techniques, with post-docs Salman Habib and Mohsen Moradi.

Jan 6

Began sabbatical leave visiting Dr. Pablo Olmos at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, working on deep learning and generative AI.