October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer1 Report on the Second Annual School of Information Theory Report on the Second Annual School of Information Theory BoG meeting, ITW 2009 October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener & Gerhard Kramer

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer2

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer3

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer4 Summary The school took place at Northwestern University, Aug Over 140 students attended: a 40% increase in student attendance as compared to last year! Our budget is balanced: we were tight until 2 weeks before the school but then received extra funding from DARPA/ARO and NSF

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer5 Organizing Committee and Local Volunteers General Organization: Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer Local Organization and Program: Randall Berry and Donging Guo Applications and Program: Daniela Tuninetti and Natasha Devroye Web Site: Matthieu Bloch

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer6 Organizing Committee and Local Volunteers (cont’d) Publicity: Yalin Sagduyu Student volunteers: Jieying Chen, Hang Zhou, Jun Luo, Suvarup Saha, Ka Hung Hui, Lei Zheng, Changxin Shi, Echo Yang, Songqing Zhao, and Yang Weng Special thanks to Stephano Rini for wonderful photographs Maurice Parris, Northwestern University

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer7 Thank You to our Instructors For great lectures and your willingness to take the time to interact with the student attendees. Dan Costello, Bruce Hajek, Abbas El Gamal (Padovani Lecture), Bob Gallager (Keynote)

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer8 Thank You to our Financial Supporters IEEE Information Theory Society DARPA- ITMANET and ARO NSF Northwestern USC Notre Dame Roberto Padovani

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer9 Program Overview Aug 10 Monday Aug 11 Tuesday Aug 12 Wednesday Aug 13 Thursday Opening remarks 3X90min Lectures Dan Costello “Foundations and Trends in Coding Theory” 3X90min Lectures Bruce Hajek “A Sampling of Network Theory 3X90 Lectures Abbas El Gamal “Achievability for Discrete Memoryless Systems” Keynote Bob Gallager “The Early Development of Information Theory, and What It Means for Today” Student Presentations 4-6:00 pm Student Presentations 4-6:00 pm PICNIC by the Lake 6:30pm Student Presentations 4:00-6:00 pm Student Presentations 11:00am-3:30 pm All lecture videos are available online, as well as many photos

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer10 Posters Due to the large number of students, we had posters only (no student talks) Poster sessions held every day after the lectures Before each poster session students presenting lined up and introduced their work with a 1-minute slide

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer11 What the school provided Registration Package: campus map, other local information Food: Breakfast, Coffee Break, Snacks, Lunch Picnic on Tuesday Wireless LAN accounts Poster boards/easels New addition this year: Dorm rooms for all students fully paid! This added almost $30k to the budget, costs similar to 2008 with many more students!

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer12 Travel Grants Encourage commitment: collected $100 from each student staying in the dorms Thanks to our sponsors, we could refund this money ($12,600 in total):  free accommodations for all non-local student attendees We also awarded modest travel supplements totaling about $3,000 to 31 students

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer13 Fundraising: $58k Information Theory Society $20k DARPA- ITMANET and ARO $20k NSF $10k Northwestern $5k USC $2k Notre Dame $1k Padovani Lecture

July 6, 2008Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer14 Budget Details (almost finalized) Dorms$28,600 Food total$19,648 Student travel grants$3,042 Other (videos, photos, posters, badges, reg. packs) $ 2,800 Organizer travel$ 2,086 Instructor travel$ 1,860 (w/o Padovani) Total$58,036 (of $58k) +

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer15 Anonymous Feedback Verbal feedback positive re lectures, peer interactions, and student-instructor interactions We conducted an anonymous survey (56 responses) –“Will you recommend School of IT to your colleagues: YES: 53 ; no: 0 ; maybe: 3 –“Will you attend a future School of IT?” YES: 35; no: 0; maybe: 21 Other questions: see next chart

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer16 Survey results Rating (5 best) 54321Avg. Local arrangements (A+) Overall organization (A+) How much did the school meet your expectations? (A) How much did you learn from theschool? (A) How was the level of interaction between the students and the professors? (A)

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer17 Outlook for 2010 We plan the 2010 School to be at USC Tentative dates: Thu-Sun, Aug 5-8, Organizing Team: Aylin (PSU), Gerhard (USC) Michael Neely (USC) Alex Dimakis (USC) Sriram Vishwanath (UT Austin) Matthieu Bloch (Georgia Tech)

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer18 Preparations USC Dorm rates: $50/night 130 beds blocked USC Conference Services requests 10% deposit within 3 weeks to sign contract ≈ 0.1(130)(4)($50)=$2,600

October 13, 2009Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer19 Request for Funds We respectfully ask for 1.Approval to hold the 2010 School of IT at USC 2.the amount to cover the USC Conference Services deposit (expected to be between $2,500 and $3,000)