11 Report on the 3 rd & 4 th Annual Schools of Information Theory Report on the 3 rd & 4 th Annual Schools of Information Theory Aylin Yener & Gerhard Kramer & Sriram Vishwanath Presented at the BoG meeting Sep 28, 2010, UIUC by Giuseppe Caire

2 Report on the 3 rd Annual School of Information Theory held at USC in August

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4 Program Overview Aug 5 Thursday Aug 6 Friday Aug 7 Saturday Aug 8 Sunday Opening remarks 2X60min Lectures Jack Wolf 2X60min Lectures Andrea Goldsmith 2X60min Lectures Emmanuel Candès 2X60min Lectures Alon Orlitsky 2X60min Lectures Sergio Verdú Student Presentations 1:30-3:30 pm 2X60min Lectures Rüdiger Urbanke Student Presentations 1-3 pm Student Presentations 4-6 pm Picnic! EE building 6:45 pm Student Presentations 4-6 pm Group Photo + T-shirts! Dinner outside EE building 6:45 pm Student Presentations 4-6 pm Dinner outside EE building 6:45 pm School Ends 3 pm Lecture materials will be available online at:

Attendees 2010 IT School Number of Applicants: 239 students Confirmed: 178 (≈26% increase over 141 in 2009) –Housing: 132 (≈135 in 2009) –No Housing: 46 Cancellations: 61 (≈26% is quite high vs. 2009) Others: 6 instructors, 6 organizers, 4 junior faculty, 7 guests Total: ≈ 200 people

66 Estimated Budget USC housing: $27k –$50/person/night x 4 nights x 135 Food: 4 days, 220 attendees ≈ $36k Instructor/organizer travel = $8k Materials = $5k Incidentals = $1k Travel Grants: $10k Total: $87k

77 Fundraising Housing fee: $120/student x 132 students ≈$15.8k ITSOC: $20k ARL: $15k NSF: $14k USC Ming Hsieh Institute (1 st grant!): $10k Individual school contributions: –USC EE: $2.8k –Northwestern, Rice, Texas A&M: $2k –Notre Dame, Penn State, UT Austin: $1k –Princeton: $0.5k Total: $87.1k

8 Thank You Next: some important THANK YOU’s to our many volunteers

9 Local volunteers Thank You Thank You To Our USC Volunteers Food, Hotel, Housing, Registration and Packages: Anita Fung, Gerrielyn Ramos Students (from across the world!): Marjan Baghaie, Ozgun Bursalioglu, Prasanta Ghosh, Hassan Ghozlan, Joshua Gunn, Song-Nam Hong, Kung-Chuan Hsu, Hoon Huh, Dileep Kalathil, Jeong Gon Kim, Ching-Yi Lai, Chih-Ping Li, Angeliki Metallinou, Bill Ntranos, Krishnakumar Raman, Peyman Razaghi, Arash Saber Tehrani, Rahul Urgaonkar, Feng Wan, Bo Xiao, Daphney-Stavroula Zois

10 Organizing Committee Thank You Thank You To Our Organizers Matthieu Bloch : Web Site and Electronic Submissions Michelle Effros and Tracey Ho : Program and Applications Alex Dimakis and Mike Neely : T-Shirts, Local Organization Sriram Vishwanath : Treasurer

11 Instructors Thank You Thank You To Our Teachers Jack Wolf: Can an Information Theorist by Happy in a Center for Information Storage? Andrea Goldsmith: Seeking Shannon Capacity of Wireless Channels and Networks Emmanuel Candès: Information Theory of Data Matrices: Recovery from Incomplete and Corrupted Entries Alon Orlitsky: Probability Estimation over Large Alphabets Sergio Verdú: Reading Shannon Rüdiger Urbanke: Approaching Shannon

12 Financial Support Thank You Thank You For Very Generous Contributions: IEEE Information Theory Society ARL/ARO NSF USC Ming Hsieh Institute

13 Financial Support (Continued) Thank You Thank You To USC Electrical Engineering Northwestern University - Master of Science in Information Technology Program Rice University - Center for Multimedia Communication Texas A&M University – ECE Department Penn State - Networking and Security Research Center The University of Texas at Austin – Wireless Networking and Communications Group University of Notre Dame - Anonymous Princeton University Roberto Padovani

14 Web Site & Newsletter Web site: lectures & photos & videos A blog-like page with responses to Sergio Verdú’s homework assignment “What surprises me most in reading Shannon's paper is....” will be public soon Detailed IT School report to appear in Dec newsletter

15 Future Schools Enthusiasm about the School has spread! Enthusiasm about the School has spread! Volunteers for future schools: Volunteers for future schools: – 2011: UT Austin (Sriram Vishwanath & Tie Liu) –2012: Cornell (Aaron Wagner & Salman Avestimehr) ) –2013: Banff (Christian Schlegel )

16 Report on the 2011 School of Information Theory

2011 School of Information Theory Venue: Austin TX, UT campus When: Memorial Day weekend (May 28-31) Why that weekend? –Weather in Austin is still good –For quarter system: overlaps with just one working day (Tuesday, which will be a half day) –For most semester systems, it is the summer break Main issue with later dates: Austin’s hot hot hot ! 17

Logistics Confirmed Organizing Committee members –Co-chairs: Tie Liu and Sriram Vishwanath –Publicity: Matthieu Bloch –Posters: Bobak Nazer –Local Arrangements: Sujay Sanghavi Further members (treasurer, t-shirts) being recruited 18