Welcome Welcome to the 2024 Cambridge Information Theory Colloquium! 
Following the inaugural event in 2023, we organised this one-day event on Friday, 10 May 2024, centred around top-quality talks in information theory and related areas. In addition, there was a poster session for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. The main aim was to bring together UK researchers in information theory and related areas as well as friends of the UK information theory community.
Location The Colloquium will take place at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK. Room: LR4, Baker building (next to reception).
Confirmed Speakers
Talks
Registration deadline:Thursday, 2nd May Monday, 6th May
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 Alister Burr University of York
Following the inaugural event in 2023, we organised this one-day event on Friday, 10 May 2024, centred around top-quality talks in information theory and related areas. In addition, there was a poster session for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. The main aim was to bring together UK researchers in information theory and related areas as well as friends of the UK information theory community.
Location The Colloquium will take place at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK. Room: LR4, Baker building (next to reception).
Confirmed Speakers - Thomas Courtade University of California, Berkeley
- Oliver Johnson University of Bristol
- Yossef Steinberg Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology
| 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 |
- Title: A galaxy of information inequalities, with applications
- Speaker: Thomas Courtade University of California, Berkeley
- Abstract: 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.
- Title: Relative entropy bounds for sampling with and without replacement
- Speaker: Oliver Johnson University of Bristol
- Abstract: 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.
(based on joint work https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06632 with Lampros Gavalakis, Ioannis Kontoyiannis)
- 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’s College, Cambridge, and a Max Newman Research Fellow with Cambridge University until 2006.
- Title: Robust Cooperation Schemes
- Speaker : Yossef Steinberg Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology
- 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 — 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. This talk is based in part on joint works with Dor Itzhak and Wasim Huleihel.
- 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–Israel Institute of Technology and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University.
Registration deadline:
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 Alister Burr University of York
