Alexander Barg has made fundamental contributions as a researcher and educator in coding and information theory. His outstanding accomplishments include work on locally recoverable codes, coding for digital fingerprinting, coding for rank modulation, geometric packing, expander codes, and error-exponents of random codes in channel coding. He was awarded the Hamming Medal for contributions to the theory of error-correcting codes and their applications in distributed storage, non-volatile memory, and digital fingerprinting.

Named after Richard Hamming, the medal is awarded annually to individuals or teams for exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems, and technology. Subject areas include information theory, coding theory, data communication, computer networks, data storage and retrieval, and image and speech understanding. More information and medal recipients can be found at https://corporate-awards.ieee.org/award/ieee-richard-w-hamming-medal/.