The JTG Summer School in Information Theory, Networks, and Signal Processing

What is JTG? Joint Telematics Group of IITs (the six well-known ones) and IISc Telematics: Study of control, communication, and computation at a distance –From telema (genitive telematos), study of distance, as in Rajesh ’ s Random dictionary of the Engreek language History of JTG –Estd to run teacher training and industry training programmes taught by the then very few communications/SP/networking faculty in India –Since 1995 oversees the organisation of the annual National Conference on Communications (NCC) –The conference is held at one of the IITs or IISc (Jan/Feb every year) Since 2008, JTG has been running a summer school for research students

JTG Summer School Format Four days, two topics Two hours lecture + one hour discussion/complements in the morning. Same format in the afternoon Student research and/or open problem presentations in the discussion sessions Advanced, INTENSE, rigorous, primarily aimed at research students and young faculty Material for available on the web Like two mini-courses (8 lecture hours each)

Past Summer Schools 2008 (Experimental, Zeroth), IIT Madras –Multiterminal information theory Rajesh Sundaresan –Network codingAndrew Thangaraj and Srikrishna Bhashyam 2009 (First), IISc Bangalore –New paradigms in processing large data setsRavi Kannan and Amit Deshpande –Network function computationD.Manjunath 2010 (Second), IISc Bangalore –Physical layer securityMatthieu Bloch –Markov renewal processes and mean-field limitsAnurag Kumar 2011 (Third): IIT Bombay –Statistical recovery problems in high dimensionsMartin Wainwright –Optimizing performance of wireless networksPrasanna Chaporkar 2012 (Fourth): IIT Bombay –Games and mechanisms for communication systemsBruce Hajek –Communication complexityJaikumar Radhakrishnan 2013 (Fifth): IIT Madras (just finished last week) –Random matrix theory and wireless networksGiuseppe Caire –Stochastic geometry for wireless networksSrikanth Iyer

JTG Summer School 2010 Registration: Very cheap (about INR 1000 to pay for foreign speaker travel, about INR 80,000) Participant profile: 97 registrations –IISc 41 students + 5 faculty (including speaker) –IITs and TIFR faculty –IIT participants mostly from IITM, IITB. (IITK had 2) –Others students gave short talks Sponsors: IISc ’ s ECE department, DRDO-IISc PME (INR 50,000), DST (INR 75,000), Anurag ’ s and Rajesh ’ s project funds (balance, about INR 50,000) COMSNETS Association offered partial support from 2011 onwards.

JTG Summer School 2013 Registration: Very cheap (INR 1000 for students, INR 1500 for others) Participant profile: 107 registrations –69 students (about 60 from IISc/IITs/TIFR) –23 faculty (about 10 from IISc/IITs/TIFR) –15 others (companies, research organizations) 4 students gave 30-minute talks Sponsors: –Registration (INR 120,000) –COMSNETS Association (INR 100,000) –Govt agencies: DST (INR 75,000), CSIR (INR 50,000) –Industry: Saankhya Labs (INR 50,000), Qualcomm (INR 50,000), Microsoft Research (INR 50,000), Google (INR 25,000)

What we want from IT Society Blessing Money (USD 20,000 of annual support to help us sustain this program) Visibility Participation, check it out!

Forecast of Budget (in INR) Speaker travel:150,000 Honoraria:100,000 Speaker accommodations: 100,000 Student accommodations:200,000 Food500,000 Arrangements, stationery300,000 Total: INR 1,250,000 ~ USD 23,000 Balance will be covered by registrations, local funding agencies

Our plan for the future Name: can be changed if there is sustained funding support from ITSoc Round robin schedule –IIT Madras, IISc, IIT Bombay – institutes that seem to send the most participants –Currently sojourn time: 2 years to exploit organisational lessons learned, tap known funding resources (flexible) –New venues could be added after traction (flexible if there is sustained participation from candidate location) Timing: May/June, depending on anticipated local climate conditions Topics at the forefront of research in information theory, communications, networking, signal processing, particularly emerging problem areas. One speaker from India (to reduce travel cost) and one from abroad (flexible) Organising committee: Chooses venue, topics, speakers –Andrew Thangaraj, Srikrishna Bhashyam (IIT Madras) –Rajesh Sundaresan, Navin Kashyap (IISc) –Vinod Prabhakaran (TIFR Mumbai), Sibiraj Bhaskaran Pillai (IIT Bombay) –Short-list potential speakers for following year at a meeting during the current workshop. Invitations sent out right after. Advisory group: JTG National Coordinator, IT Society President, Prakash Narayan, B. Sundar Rajan, P. Vijay Kumar –Utter words of wisdom when requested