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Student Committee Report

Aylin Yener, Penn State

Presented at the Officers meeting, ITA, UCSD

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Outline

• Previous Events:– ISIT 2008– Allerton 2008

• Upcoming Events:– CISS 2009, ISIT 2009

• Forward look• Second Annual School of

Information Theory Update

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ISIT 2008, Toronto

• July 7, 2008: we organized a research discussion round table event for all participating students.

• 130+ students attended the lunch event. Discussion leaders were:– Graphical models - Alex Dimakis (UC Berkeley)– Source coding - Krish Eswaran (UC Berkeley)– Feedback - Ramji Venkataramanan (University of

Michigan)– Interference and Secrecy - Xiang He (Penn State)– Relaying - Bobak Nazer (UC Berkeley)– Distributed detection and estimation - Anima

Anandkumar (Cornell)– Scaling laws - Awlok Josan (University of

Michigan)– Zero-error Information Theory - Salim El

Rouayheb (Texas A&M)– Optimization - Chee Wei Tan (Princeton)

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ISIT 2008, Toronto (2)

• July 10, 2008: we organized a panel discussion titled “What Makes a Great Researcher?”

• Panelist were: Tom Cover and Andrea Goldsmith of Stanford, Sergio Verdu of Princeton University, Alon Orlitsky of UCSD and Alexander Barg of University of Maryland.

• 130+ attendees. Lunch provided; free IT student committee T-shirts were distributed to the participants.

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Allerton 2008

• Joint event with the Outreach Committee

• Panel on Mentoring at Allerton library.• Panelist were: Todd Coleman (UIUC),

Elza Erkip (Poly), Olgica Milenkovic (UIUC), Roy Yates (Rutgers), and Aylin Yener (Penn State).

• It was a good and interactive discussion.

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Upcoming Events

• CISS 09, probably a round table research event

• ISIT 09, round table, panel• ?

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Membership Update

• Retired members: Brooke Shrader, Lalitha Sankar, Nan Liu

• New members: Student co-chair: Krish Eswaran (UCB); member: Deniz Gunduz (Princeton/Stanford), Xiang He (Penn State); Web: Matthieu Bloch (Notre Dame)

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Forward look:

• Volunteers– We need to reach out to more

volunteers to actively participate.– Potential new members need to

be sought as the current ones transition to post-student life.

• Web– Integration to the new ITSoc site.

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Update: Second Annual School of Information Theory

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Organizing Committee for 2009

• Aylin Yener, Penn State• Gerhard Kramer, USC• Daniela Tuninetti, UIC• Randy Berry, Northwestern• Dongning Guo, Northwestern• Natasha Devroye, UIC• Yalin Sagduyu, Northwestern• Matthieu Bloch, Notre Dame

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Goals and Procedure: same as 2008!

• Any graduate student or post-doc eligible to apply.

• Students apply for the school with their presentation/poster title.

• Students will each give a 10min talk or present a poster.

• Cap:100 students. • No registration Fee. • Ideally: NO COST to attendees.• Reality: As allowed by travel grants.• New for 2009: Lodging available in

the dorms.

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Organization Update• Northwestern classrooms

will be used. • Instructor list almost

complete. • Application deadline set.• Fundraising: 10k from

ITSoc; otherwise: lots of effort, no outcome yet

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Calendar, Location for 2009

The Second Annual School of Information Theory will take place August 10– August 13, Thursday 2009 at the Northwestern University Campus, Evanston IL.

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Keynote and Instructors

• Keynote: Robert Gallager• Instructors:

– Bruce Hajek– Dan Costello – ? (perhaps)

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2009 Budget (100 students, 4 days)

• Lunches total: $ 8000• Wednesday Barbecue: $ 3500• Breaks total: $ 4000• Breakfasts total: $ 4500• Easels, poster boards, badges, registration

packets, mutimedia, … $ 4000• Instructor travel support $ 3500• Contingency $ 2500

• TOTAL 30k, not including student travel grants.

• Most expensive item: food (as in 2008).• Students pay for lodging and dinners.

+

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Funding Status

• Society: 10k commitment (Sept 08)

• NSF might come through for travel support.

• Motion: We request (upto 10k) more commitment from the society at this time.