October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 1

Report on the Second Report on the Second Annual School of Annual School of

Information TheoryInformation Theory BoG meeting, ITW 2009

October 13, 2009

Aylin Yener & Gerhard Kramer

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 2

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 3

http://www.itsoc.org/people/committees/student/2009-school-of-it

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 4

Summary• The school took place at Northwestern

University, Aug 10-13• Over 140 students attended: a 40%

increase in student attendance as compared to last year!

• Our budget is balanced:we were tight until 2 weeksbefore the school but thenreceived extra funding fromDARPA/ARO and NSF

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 5

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 andNatasha Devroye

• Web Site: Matthieu Bloch

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 6

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, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 7

Thank You to our Thank You to our InstructorsInstructorsFor 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, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 8

Thank You to our Thank You to our Financial SupportersFinancial Supporters

• IEEE Information Theory Society

• DARPA- ITMANET and ARO• NSF• Northwestern• USC• Notre Dame• Roberto Padovani

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 9

Program Overview

Aug 10Monday

Aug 11Tuesday

Aug 12Wednesday

Aug 13Thursday

Opening remarks

3X90min Lectures Dan Costello“Foundations and Trends in Coding Theory”

3X90min Lectures Bruce Hajek“A Sampling of Network Theory

3X90 LecturesAbbas El Gamal “Achievability for Discrete Memoryless Systems”

KeynoteBob Gallager “The Early Development of Information Theory, and What It Meansfor Today”

Student Presentations4-6:00 pm

Student Presentations4-6:00 pm

PICNIC by the Lake 6:30pm

Student Presentations4:00-6:00 pm

Student Presentations 11:00am-3:30 pm

All lecture videos are available online, as well as many photoshttp://www.itsoc.org/people/committees/student/2009-school-of-it

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 10

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 sessionstudents presenting linedup and introduced theirwork with a 1-minute slide

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 11

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 studentsfully paid! This added almost$30k to the budget, costs

similar to 2008 withmany more students!

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 12

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 allnon-local student attendees

• We also awarded modesttravel supplements totalingabout $3,000 to 31 students

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 13

Fundraising: $58k

• Information Theory Society $20k

• DARPA- ITMANET and ARO $20k• NSF $10k• Northwestern $5k• USC $2k• Notre Dame $1k• Padovani Lecture

July 6, 2008 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 14

Budget Details (almost finalized)Dorms $28,600Food total $19,648Student travel grants $3,042Other (videos, photos, posters, badges, reg. packs)

$ 2,800

Organizer travel $ 2,086Instructor travel $ 1,860 (w/o Padovani)

Total $58,036 (of $58k)

+

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 15

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 Schoolof IT?”

YES: 35; no: 0; maybe: 21• Other questions: see next chart

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 16

Survey resultsRating (5 best) 5 4 3 2 1 Avg.Local arrangements

32 21 2 1 0 4.5 (A+)

Overall organization

32 21 3 0 0 4.5 (A+)

How much did the school meet your expectations?

20 28 7 1 0 4.2 (A)

How much did you learn from theschool?

14 26 16 0 0 4.0 (A)

How was the level of interaction between the students and the professors?

19 21 15 1 0 4.0 (A)

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 17

Outlook for 2010

• We plan the 2010 School to be at USC• Tentative dates: Thu-Sun, Aug 5-8,

2010.• Organizing Team:

Aylin (PSU), Gerhard (USC)Michael Neely (USC)Alex Dimakis (USC)Sriram Vishwanath (UT Austin)Matthieu Bloch (Georgia Tech)

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 18

Preparations

• USC Dorm rates: $50/night130 beds blocked

• USC Conference Servicesrequests 10% deposit within3 weeks to sign contract≈ 0.1(130)(4)($50)=$2,600

October 13, 2009 Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer 19

Request for Funds

• We respectfully ask for1.Approval to hold the

2010 School of IT at USC2.the amount to cover the USC

Conference Services deposit (expected to be between$2,500 and $3,000)