Francesca Vatta (M'98) received an M.Sc. Degree in electronics engineering and a PhD degree in telecommunications from the University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, in 1992 and 1998, respectively. She joined the Department of Engineering and Architecture (DIA) of the University of Trieste in 1999, where she is an assistant professor of information theory and error-control coding. As of 2002, she spent several months as a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, U.S.A., cooperating with the Coding Theory Research Group under the guidance of Prof. D. J. Costello, Jr. As of 2005, she spent several months as a visiting scholar at the University of Ulm, Germany, cooperating with the Telecommunications and Applied Information Theory Research Group under the guidance of Prof. M. Bossert. She is the author of more than 100 papers published in international journals and conference proceedings. Her current research interests are in the areas of channel coding, particularly the analysis and design of capacity achieving coding schemes.