CITC 2024

*Welcome* Welcome to the 2024 Cambridge Information Theory Colloquium! <img alt="Colloquium_Group_Photo.jpg" height="556" src="%ATTACHURL%/Colloquium_Group_Photo.jpg" title="Colloquium_Group_Photo.jpg" width="720" /> <span style="background-color: transparent;">Following the inaugural event in </span> [[2023]]<span style="background-color: transparent;">, we are organising this one-day event on Friday 10 May 2024, centred around top-quality talks in information theory and related areas. In addition, there is a poster session for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. The main aim is to bring together UK researchers in information theory and related areas as well as friends of the UK information theory community.</span> *Location* The Colloquium will take place at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK. <strong><span style="background-color: transparent;">Confirmed Speakers</span></strong> * Thomas Courtade _University of California, Berkeley_ * Oliver Johnson _University of Bristol_ * Yossef Steinberg _Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology_ *Schedule* | Coffee Meet-and-Greet | 11:00 - 11:30 | | Thomas Courtade | 11:30 - 12:30 | | Group Photo | 12:30 - 12:45 | | Lunch and Poster Session | 12:45 - 14:00 | | Yossef Steinberg | 14:00 - 15:00 | | Coffee Break | 15:00 - 15:45 | | Oliver Johnson | 15:45 - 16:45 | *Talks* * <strong>Title: </strong>A galaxy of information inequalities, with applications * <strong>Speaker: </strong>Thomas Courtade _University of California, Berkeley_ * <strong>Abstract: </strong>This talk will cover recent developments in information inequalities, with an emphasis on unifying perspectives. In particular, I'll present a general class of entropy inequalities, and demonstrate a variety of applications to information theory, analysis, geometry, statistics (and more!). This talk is based in part on joint works with Jingbo Liu and Efe Aras. * *Thomas Courtade* is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and a core member of the Center for Computational Biology at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2012 and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford University within the NSF Center for Science of Information.<hr /> * <strong style="background-color: transparent;">Title: </strong>Relative entropy bounds for sampling with and without replacement * <strong>Speaker: </strong>Oliver Johnson _University of Bristol_ * <strong>Abstract: </strong>It is well-known that the distributions resulting from sampling with and without replacement from an urn of balls of c colours are close in a variety of senses. However, previous bounds on the relative entropy have not depended on the counts of balls of each colour. We remedy that here, providing two bounds which are tight for "balanced" (roughly equal numbers of each colour) and "unbalanced" cases respectively. As a consequence, we are able to deduce bounds of optimal order in the finite de Finetti theorem, which describes the probability distributions of exchangeable sequences. <p>(based on joint work https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06632 with Lampros Gavalakis, Ioannis Kontoyiannis)</p> * *Oliver Johnson* is a Professor of Information Theory and Director of the Institute for Statistical Science in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2000 and was a Clayton Research Fellow with Christ&rsquo;s College, Cambridge, and a Max Newman Research Fellow with Cambridge University until 2006.<hr /> * *Title:* Robust Cooperation Schemes * *Speaker* <span style="background-color: transparent;"> *:* Yossef Steinberg <i>Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology</i><br /></span> * *Abstract:* It has long been observed that cooperation in communication networks can significantly enhance the network performance. Cooperation can take place in many forms: conference links between users, helpers that send to the users information on the channel state, feedback links that enable message sharing between users, and more. Each of these forms require system resources - dedicated time slots, bandwidth, energy, computational power etc. Unfortunately, in modern communication networks, these resources cannot be guaranteed a-priori: users that serve as helpers come and go, their willingness to serve others' communication needs may depend on battery status, mobility, and other parameters that cannot be predicted before communication begins. Moreover, often active users cannot be notified about missing system resources, thus coding schemes cannot be dynamically updated according to system state. Hence there is a need for robust coding schemes, that utilize cooperation resources when they exist, but can operate also when they are absent, possibly at reduced decoding rates. Naturally, robustness does cost something &mdash; the resulting rates would be lower than the achievable rates when the system state (resources) is stable and known a priori to all. In this talk I will present basic cooperation/helpers models. I will discuss situations where users cannot be notified about the availability of conference links or helpers, thus requiring robust schemes. Bounds and capacity results will be presented for a few central models. * *Yossef Steinberg* is a Professor at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from Tel-Aviv University in 1990. He was a Lady Davis Fellow with the Technion&ndash;Israel Institute of Technology and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University.<hr /> *Registration* Registration is *free* but required to make the appropriate logistics arrangements. *Please follow the [[https://forms.gle/ziJNuTyLhotgLmzw7][registration link]].* *Registration deadline:* <s>Thursday, 2nd May</s> Monday, 6th May <strong><br /></strong> *Organisers* Amir R. Asadi _University of Cambridge_ Albert Guillén i Fàbregas _University of Cambridge_ *Participants* Thomas Courtade _University of California, Berkeley_ Oliver Johnson _University of Bristol_ Yossef Steinberg _Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology_ Gholamali Aminian _The Alan Turing Institute_ Varun Jog _University of Cambridge_ Osvaldo Simeone _KCL_ Po-Ling Loh _University of Cambridge_ Eugenio Clerico _Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona_ Sidharth Jaggi _University of Bristol_ Samir Perlaza _INRIA_ Samah A. M. Ghanem Amir R. Asadi _University of Cambridge_ Albert Guillén i Fàbregas _University of Cambridge_ Pouya Moeini _University of Cambridge_ Xiaoqi Shirley Liu _University of Cambridge_ Francesc Molina _Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain_ Ioannis Kontoyiannis _University of Cambridge_ Valentinian Lungu _University of Cambridge_ Huiying Song _Tokyo Institute of Technology_ Sharu Theresa Jose _University of Birmingham_ Lan V. Truong _University of Essex_ Lampros Gavalakis _Univ Gustave Eiffel_ Ramji Venkataramanan _University of Cambridge_ Cong Ling _Imperial College London_ Hao Yan _Imperial College London_ Pablo Pascual Cobo _University of Cambridge_ Iñaki Esnaola _University of Sheffield_ Petros Georgiou _University of Birmingham_ Mostafa Rahmani Ghourtani _University of York_ Yirong Shen _Imperial College London_ Hui-An Shen _University of Bern_ Matthew Aldridge _University of Leeds_ Andreas Theocharous _University of Cambridge_ Sergio Bacallado _University of Cambridge_ Jossy Sayir _University of Cambridge_

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