IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter

Vol. 70, No. 4, December 2020 EDITOR: Salim El Rouayheb ISSN 1059-2362

President’s Column Aylin Yener

A whole year has come and gone and what a convergence of communications, computing, year it has been. As winter sets in, we are now control and sensing, and building on the more experiencing a significant surge in COVID adaptable network design that had already and while hopeful news of viable vaccines is started in the current generation, we are in a here, there is still a long way until some nor- perfect position to consider the potential to malcy returns. Since my last column, we have realize information and coding theoretic ideas had to come to the difficult decision that, in for connecting everything, and if we are suc- at least a significant portion of 2021, we will cessful, there is a good chance we may see a continue to see one another in 2D in meet- repeat of the 2000s in the coming decade in ings and conferences. Specifically, ITW 2020, our community. which was postponed to April 2021 in hopes of holding a physical meeting, is now going On the flip side, as research dissemination to be virtual. Our flagship conference ISIT models evolve, we see information theorists 2021 will also be held fully virtual. The ISIT also expand their publishing portfolio, not organizers have worked hard over the past just in communications and signal process- few months, examined the alternatives and in ing, but also in machine learning communi- the end came to the conclusion that designing an innovative ties, reaching out to wider audiences. My own view is that all online conference is the best course of action. The chairs of the of these are healthy endeavors that enable us to recognize that conference are working on a number of innovations for the there is not one kind of information theorist, and while we next ISIT, including in timing/dates, delivery methods and are all known for our highest of intellectual standards with- live Q&A for paper sessions. Though we will not be able to in academia, there is also merit in demonstrating the reach visit Melbourne, I am confident that this will be an outstand- foundational thinking can have. After all, we all know that ing ISIT, and would like to invite the community to submit separation in system design (not to be confused with physical their best work. separation that is necessary) is optimal only in very specific instances, even if it is easier. Speaking of best work, research productivity of our community has shown no signs of slowing down despite this chal- More evidence to the potential and influence of the society lenging year. The foundational and principled thinking that is in the larger professional community of IEEE, despite being present in all information theory and coding research makes quite a bit smaller than the largest two societies (computer it easy for the bright minds in our community to contrib- and communications), is our society’s significant intellectual ute seminal results in adjacent and cross-disciplinary fields impact measured by the recognitions. The most recently an- alike, including communications, computing, learning and nounced 2021 IEEE medals and technical field awards include inference, information security and privacy, and quantum. In a number of information theorists. This year, our society has “machine” learning, we see results of significance from infor- also done very well in fellow elevations effectively doubling mation theorists, affirming that, the field has the potential for the typical success rate, a first that we hope very much will impact, both through the core expertise and through creative continue in the coming years. crossover ideas. Information theorists continue to work on a diverse array of problems with societal impact directly or Overall, we have had a good year despite the pandemic. We indirectly, including healthcare analytics, epidemiology, and have been able to grow our membership significantly. We responsible data science. Importantly, the next generation of connectedness, “6G”, vision is starting to crystalize: With the (continued on page 14) 2 From the Editor Salim El Rouayheb

With the holiday season drawing near, I including the past three presidents, the BoG members, News- want to wish everyone a happy and healthy letter Editorial Board, Matt Lafleur, and of course, all those new year. Our last issue in 2020 opens up who contributed to the Newsletter. Special thanks also go to with Aylin Yener’s final column as Presi- my former student Rawad Bitar and current student Ghadir dent of the IT Society. Please join me in Ayache, for their great assistance in putting together these is- thanking Aylin for her dedication and hard sues. I want to wish the best for my successor, Changho Suh, work leading our society during this chal- and congratulations on his new appointment. lenging year. Also, I would like to extend a warm welcome to our incoming president As a reminder, Announcements, news, and events intend- Wei Yu. This issue features a report from ed for both the printed newsletter and the website, such as the SYSU Workshop on Network Informa- award announcements, calls for nominations, and upcom- tion Theory and Coding which was held in ing conferences, can be submitted at the IT Society web- Guangzhou, China in September. We con- site http://www.itsoc.org. Articles and columns can be e-mailed to Changho Suh at tinue with the BoG minutes from the last [email protected] with a subject line that includes the words “IT newsletter.” meeting in the summer. With sadness, we conclude with an in memoriam for Kamil The next few deadlines are: Sh. Zigangirov who passed last March. Jan 30, 2020 for the issue of March 2021. This issue of the newsletter is the last issue for me as the Newsletter Editor. For April 10, 2020 for the issue of June 2021. the past three years, I have enjoyed in- teracting with many of you through the Please submit plain text, LaTeX, or Word source files; do not worry about fonts or layout as Newsletter and learning more about the this will be taken care of by IEEE layout specialists. Electronic photos and graphics should vibrant society that we have. I would like be in high resolution and sent as separate files. to thank everyone who supported me and the Newsletter during the past three years, Salim El Rouayheb

IEEE Information Theory Table of Contents

Society Newsletter President’s Column ...... 1 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter (USPS 360-350) is published quarterly by the Information Theory Society of the Institute of From the Editor ...... 2 Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, SYSU Workshop on Network Information Theory and Coding ...... 3 New York, NY 10016-5997. Cost is $1.00 per member per year (included in Society fee) for each member of the Call for Nominations ...... 4 Information Theory Society. Printed in the U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors Meeting...... 6 Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, A Tribute to Kamil Sh. Zigangirov ...... 13 IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. © 2020 IEEE. Information contained in this newsletter may be copied without permis- Recent Publications...... 15 sion provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, and the title of the publication and its date Conference Calendar ...... 24 appear. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/ whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

Promoting Sustainable Forestry

SFI-01681

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 3 SYSU Workshop on Network Information Theory and Coding

The Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) Workshop on Network of traditional receive-and-forward, at intermediate nodes, which Information Theory and Coding went well in the University’s has been widely used in distributed storage, coded caching, etc. Guangzhou South Campus in Guangzhou, China on September This workshop aims to provide a platform for scholars in South 26, 2020. This workshop was organized by the IEEE Information China to exchange new research results on network information Theory Society Guangzhou Chapter, co-sponsored by Sun Yat-sen theory and coding, which will be beneficial for the community, University and the Chinese Institute of Electronics Information Universities and the graduate students of the area. The workshop Theory Society. More than 50 scholars and industry partners from was chaired by Li Chen, a Professor of Sun Yat-sen University and mainland China participated the Workshop. A few others from also the chair of Guangzhou Chapter. Hong Kong, including the first speaker Raymond Yeung of CUHK, participated online due to travel restrictions. The Guangzhou There were seven invited talks in this workshop, with Chapter experimented resuming the first onsite conference after a coverage of multi-source network coding, distributed the outbreak of COVID-19. We were pleased it went well. storage, coded caching, subspace codes, etc. In the morning session, Raymond Yeung of the Chinese University of Hong Network coding is a technique to improve the throughput of infor- Kong presented recent results in symmetric multilevel mation flow by allowing coding on received data packets, instead diversity coding system (SMDCS), in which an explicit

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 4 characterization of the superposition coding rate region Berkeley Shenzhen Institute presented some new construc- was obtained. Then, Xiaohu Tang of Southwest Jiaotong tions of cooperative MSR codes. The last talk was presented University introduced the placement-delivery array (PDA) by Congduan Li of Sun Yat-sen University, who shared the and its applications in various distributed models. The latest research results on multi-source multicast network morning session ended with the talk by Shutao Xia of Tsinghua coding rate region. Shenzhen International Graduate School, which showed some improved bounds and singleton-optimal constructions Finally, Li Chen summarized the workshop and expressed his of locally repairable codes. The afternoon session started gratitude to the SYSU team for their efforts in organizing this with the talk by Hao Chen of Jinan University, with a focus fruitful event. He advocated holding regular workshops of on several constructions of subspace codes. Then, Minquan different themes in future to provide platforms for scholars of the Cheng of Guangxi Normal University presented in details region, in proliferating information theory research and educating the coded caching schemes from PDA. Min Ye of Tsinghua- younger talents.

Call for Nominations (ordered by deadline date) Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award

The IEEE Information Theory Society Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award, established in 2013, is awarded annually to the author of an outstanding doctoral dissertation contributing to the mathematical foundations of any of the information sciences within the purview of the Society including, but not limited to, Shannon theory, source and channel coding theory, data compression, learning theory, quantum information theory and computing, complexity theory, and applications of information theory in probability and statistics. Nomination of underrepresented minorities are encouraged. Eligible dissertations must have been successfully defended during the two calendar years prior to the award year.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: Nominations and letters of endorsement must be submitted by January 15 using the online form available at https://www.itsoc.org/honors/cover-award IEEE Joint ComSoc/ITSoc Paper Award

The Communications Society/Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers that lie at the intersection of communications and information theory. Any paper appearing in a ComSoc or ITSoc publication during the preceding three calendar years is eligible for the award.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: Nominations and letters of endorsement must be submitted by February 15, 2021. All nominations should be submitted using the online nomination forms. Please see http://www.itsoc.org/honors/comsoc-information- theoryjoint-paper-award/comsoc-itsoc-paper-award-nomination-form for details. Please include a statement outlining the paper’s contributions. IEEE Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award

The IEEE Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award is given annually to honor consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: Nominations and letters of endorsement must be submitted by March 1, 2021. All nominations should be submitted using the online nomination forms. Please see http:// www .itsoc.org/shannon-award for details.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 5

IEEE Information Theory Society Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award

The IT Society Aaron D. Wyner Service Award honors individuals who have shown outstanding leadership in, and provided long standing exceptional service to, the Information Theory community.

Do you have a colleague who is a senior member of IEEE and is deserving of election to IEEE Fellow status? If so, please submit a nomination on his or her behalf to the IEEE Fellow Committee. The deadline for nominations is March 1, 2021.

IEEE Fellow status is granted to a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments. The honor is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors, and the total number of Fellow recommendations in any one year is limited to 0.1% of the IEEE voting membership. For further details on the nomination process please consult: http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/ fellows/index.html IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award

The Information Theory Society Paper Award is given annually for an outstanding publication in the fields of interest to the Society appearing anywhere during the preceding two calendar years. The purpose of this Award is to recognize exceptional publications in the field and to stimulate interest in and encourage contributions to fields of interest of the Society.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: Nominations and letters of endorsement must be submitted by March 15, 2021. All nominations should be submitted using the online nomination forms. Please see http://www.itsoc.org/honors/information- theory-paper-award/itsoc-paper-award-nomination-form for details. Please include a statement outlining the paper’s contributions. IEEE Information Theory Society James L. Massey Research & Teaching Award for Young Scholars

The purpose of this award is to recognize outstanding achievement in research and teaching by young scholars in the Information Theory community. The award winner must be 40 years old or younger and a member of the IEEE Information Theory Society on January 1st of the year nominated.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: The nominee must be a Society member, who on January 1st of the year in which the award is given, is no more than 10 years beyond having their highest degree (up to doctor- ate) conferred. Nominations and supporting materials must be submitted by March 15, 2021. All nominations should be submitted using the online nomination forms. Please see http://www.itsoc.org/honors/ massey-award/nominationform for details. IEEE Awards

The IEEE Awards program pays tribute to technical professionals whose exceptional achievements and outstanding contributions have made a lasting impact on technology, society and the engineering profession. For information on the Awards program, and for nomination procedures, please refer to http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/index.html

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 6 IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors Meeting

Location: Zoom Remote Meeting 4) In March 2020, the following motion was issued.

Date: June 21st, 2020 To suspend the Distinguished Lecturer Program effective immediately until further notice, to revisit the suspension Time: The meeting convened at 10:00 am EST; the meeting ad- decision as soon as the COVID-19 situation starts to improve journed at 4:00 pm EST globally, and to potentially extend the current DLs’ terms to offset the suspension of the program. Meeting Chair: Aylin Yener The motion passed. Minutes taken by: Lara Dolecek 5) In March 2020, the following motion was issued. Meeting Attendees: Erik Agrell, Erdal Arkan, Matthieu Bloch, Suhas Diggavi, Alex Dimakis, Lara Dolecek, Stark Draper, To re-open the nominations for individual society awards Elza Erkip, Meir Feder, Christina Fragouli, Andrea Goldsmith, until April 6, 2020. The impacted awards are Massey (dead- Camilla Hollanti, Sid Jaggi, Tara Javidi, Vijay Kumar, Brian line March 15), Shannon (deadline March 1) and Wyner Kurkoski (#), Matt LaFleur (#), Olgica Milenkovic, Prakash (deadline March 1). Narayan, Henry Pfister, Vince Poor, Joachim Rosenthal, Para- stoo Sadeghi, Anand Sarwate (#), Igal Sason, Emina Soljanin, The motion passed. Daniela Tuninetti, Emanuele Viterbo (#), Aaron Wagner, Aylin Yener, Wei Yu 6) In March 2020, the following motion was issued.

All attendees joined remotely via Zoom; non-voting attendees are To hold ISIT 2020 as a virtual conference on the same dates denoted by (#). (June 21-26), in a manner that resembles the in-person experience as much as possible. The organizers will work Business conducted between meetings: The following votes towards this goal in consultation with officers and relevant were conducted by email between the February 2020 Information committee chairs (outreach, awards etc.). The organizers Theory Society (ITSoc) Board of Governors (BoG) meetings and will come up with new registration fees to reflect the new this meeting: financial model.

1) In February 2020, the following motions were issued: The motion passed.

a) To approve Richard Dale Wesel as an Associate Editor for 7) In April 2020, the following motions were issued: Coding Techniques in the IT Transactions. a) To approve the minutes from the February 2020 meeting. b) To approve Achilleas Anastasopoulos as an Associate Editor for Communications in the IT Transactions. b) Motion 2: (from the School Subcommittee): “We request the ITSoc BoG allow the holding of the 2020 IEEE North c) To approve Arian Maleki as an Associate Editor for American School for Information Theory, currently Signal Processing in the IT Transactions. scheduled for University of British Columbia in July 2020, to be deferred to the summer of 2021 and for the deferred The motions passed. school to be supported at the same level of $10,000 USD as was originally allocated by the BoG at the BoG meet- 2) In March 2020, the following motion was issued: ing in July 2019.”

To approve Martina Cardone as the Chair of the Student c) Motion 3: (from the School Subcommittee): “We request and Outreach Activities Subcommittee. the ITSoc BoG allow the holding of the 2020 IEEE East Asian School for Information Theory, currently sched- The motion passed. uled for Seoul University in August 2020, to be deferred to the summer of 2021 and for the deferred school to be 3) In March 2020, the following motion was issued: supported at the same level of $20,000 USD as was originally allocated by the BoG at the BoG meeting in July To postpone ITW 2020 from September 2020 to Spring 2021 2019.” with new dates to be negotiated between the general chairs and the venue. The motions passed.

The motion passed. 8) The following motion was issued in May 2020:

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 7

Motion (from the School Subcommittee): “We request the Yener thanked BoG for acting fast on several time-sensitive issues. ITSoc BoG allow the holding of the 2020 Joint Technology She stated that some motions were passed in the record 24h period. Group/IEEE School for Information Theory (JTG/ITSoc), currently scheduled to be held at the IIT Kanpur in July Next, President Yener discussed changes to the current operations, 2020, to be deferred to the summer of 2021 and for the including virtualization of ISIT, and suspension of the Distin- deferred school to be supported at the same level of $10,000 guished Lecturer Program and Information Theory Schools. She USD as was originally allocated by the BoG at the BoG stated that ITW 2020 in Italy was the first to move to 2021. The meeting in October 2019.” current plan is to hold the workshop in 2021 under the same name, although there is still a possibility that this plan may change. Some The motion passed. IT Schools are postponed to 2021, so that there might not be any schools in 2020 and the schools may all be virtual in 2021. 9) The following motion was issued in May 2020 Next, President Yener shared her thoughts on meetings. She stat- To approve Technical Co-sponsorship by the IT Society for ed that we need to adapt quickly to virtual and hybrid meeting the Seventeenth International Workshop on Algebraic and formats, and that we have to be ready to have a stronger virtual Combinatorial Coding Theory (ACCT 2020) June 9 - 15, 2020, presence. She also pointed to the relevant opinion piece written by Albena, Bulgaria. ComSoc colleagues on the future of technical conferences (Piece is titled “To Be or Not to Be—There in Person: What is the Future of The motion passed. the Technical Conference?”).

At 10:00 am EST, ITSoc President Aylin Yener called the meeting Next, she went over the activities after the start of the Covid-19 to order. crisis, describing new BoG engagement, membership engage- ments, and the creation of the new web page dedicated to latest Attendees introduced themselves. President Yener thanked every- developments in the Society, including event cancelations and one for joining the meeting and especially for joining across differ- postponements. ent time zones. President Yener explained that the meeting will be run as a webinar. She then discussed the outcome of the membership campaign aimed at improving membership numbers. Membership fee pro- The following motion was issued. motion was used in the campaign. She stated that as of May 2020, there were 734 new members, significantly improving the pre- Motion: A motion was made to approve the agenda. vious membership scale of about 2800 members. She presented charts showing breakdown by IEEE membership status; most of The motion passed. the new society members are IEEE Members, followed by IEEE Senior Members. She then stated that, as a part of the on-going President’s Report—Aylin Yener promotion, the membership fee for 2021 will be lowered to $25 for non-students and $1 for students. President Yener started by giving big Thank You’s to all the committees for all their hard work and for being so diligent, given the current Next, President Yener discussed a new initiative called the Future crisis. She then recapped the goals for 2020, focusing on openness of Information Theory Society (FITS) Digital Innovations Initiative. and engagement. These goals included member engagement, BoG FITS will aim to achieve, among other goals: one unified presence; engagement, improved communication among different volunteer one web platform that has everything; uniform views of the meet- committees, open calls, and improved membership numbers. She ing year to year; familiar interface and navigation for all; remote stated that being in the IT community means being a member of the activity support; have all content archived/available through the IT Society, and that IT also stands for Inclusiveness and Transparen- portal to the members of the IEEE ITSoc; Society’s branding of the cy. She next went into more details about the progress towards these web presence, and social media presence. FITS Ad hoc committee goals pre-Covid-19. She stated that in regards to the member engage- has been formed and its members are: Erik Agrell, Matthieu Bloch ment, ITA town hall resulted in lots of good ideas, including online (Chair), Salim El Rouhayeb, Brian Kurkoski, Henry Pfister, Anand presentations, and social media presence. In regards to the BoG en- Sarwate, Aylin Yener, and Wei Yu. gagement, she stated that the ITA meeting included discussions on Fellow nomination and evaluation process, which subsequently re- She stated that there will be a formal presentation later in this meet- sulted in the number of nominations being twice as high this year as ing followed by a motion to fund activities of the FITS committee. last year; discussion on the ISIT submission numbers, which do not appear to be a significant concern at the moments; and the discussion President Yener concluded her presentation with the outlook. She on the need for rebranding. In regards to better communication be- stated that we are in an excellent position as a society to lead in tween society volunteer committees, such as conference committees the post-Covid-19 era. She thanked Matt LaFleur for all the help in and conference organization, she stated that this is ongoing and that organizing the meeting. has in part motivated a new initiative. She also stated that the goal of better informing and equipping volunteer selection is on track. BoG members congratulated President Yener on her leadership for increasing society’s membership. A BoG member asked, and Presi- President Yener then discussed the state of the affairs in the dent clarified, that the number of IEEE Fellows from the Society may Covid-19-era. She reiterated that the society’s goals have remained also increase with the increase in the membership if we manage to intact, even yielding to better initiatives. As the world turned vir- retain the member numbers. A BoG member pointed out that the tual, BoG had a record number of motions to address. President new IT Magazine can also be an additional member benefit.

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 8

Paper Awards Committee—Wei Yu Elza went over the committee structure and its duties, which include being responsible for nominating and appointing many ITSoc Next discussed were paper awards, presented by Wei Yu. This part committee chairs/members and the IT Transactions Executive Edi- of the meeting was only for the board members who are not conflict- tor. She went over the positions on committees that have been filled ed with the paper selection procedures. 2020 Paper Awards Commit- since the last BoG meeting in February 2020. She also pointed out tee is chaired by Wei Yu. The committee prepared a detailed report that there are constraints on who can be a member of a given commit- on their selection criteria and the rationale behind their decisions. tee. She reiterated the goals of the committee, which are to diversify Wei acknowledged all the help from the committee members, stating the committee memberships and to involve new people in society that it was a lot of work to go over the award-worthy papers, espe- affairs and enlarge the pool of volunteers. Elza next went over the cially in the current circumstances. Wei stated that there are 6 paper Fellows Evaluation Committee, which is responsible for evaluating finalists for the Jack K. Wolf Student Paper Award at ISIT 2020. In- nominations for the IEEE Fellows from the Society. The chair of the formation about the finalists is available on the conference website. committee Antonia Tulino requested more members be added to the committee due to the increased number of Fellow nominations this Next, Wei presented the paper that was selected to receive the year. The committee has 9 members, who are Antonia Tulino (chair), Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Pa- Christina Fragouli, Massimo Franceschetti, Senur Ulukus, Kannan per Award. That paper is K. Lee, M. Lam, R. Pedarsani, D. Papa- Ramchandran, Pramod Viswananth, and Hirosuke Yamamoto, and iliopoulos, and K. Ramchandran, “Speeding Up Distributed Ma- the two new members are Olgica Milenkovic and Jinhong Yuan. chine Learning Using Codes,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, March 2018. Next, Elza went over the Paper Awards Committee, including the constraints on who can qualify to be a member of the committee. Afterwards, Wei discussed the IT Society Best Paper Award. He Current members of the committee are: Wei Yu (chair), Christina stated that the purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional Fragouli (ex-officio), and Kannan Ramchandran, and the new contributions. He also stated that during the selection process, members are Matthieu Bloch, Holger Bloche, Jean-Francois Cham- conflict of interest was carefully managed, and that further details berland, Bikash Kumar Dey, Maxim Raginsky, and Daniela Tuni- are in the committee’s report. In particular, he stated that the two netti. She next presented the slate of 12 candidates as new mem- papers put forth by the committee concurrently discovered the bers of the board. Elza pointed out that there are no continuing same technical result. members from Region 10, as one member’s term is ending and another member of the committee is moving out of that region. The following motion was issued: They are: Natasha Devroye, Pingzhi Fan, Massimo Franceschetti, Brian M. Kurkoski, Parastoo Sadeghi, Anand D. Sarwate, Vincent Motion: that the committee report be accepted. Y. F. Tan, Andrew Thangaraj, Daniela Tuninetti, Bane Vasic, Aaron B. Wagner, and Edmund Yeh. The motion passed. Based on a question from a BoG member, Elza clarified that this President Yener opened the floor for the discussion. A BoG mem- list does not require a vote. ber asked, and Wei clarified that bylaws state that the best paper award be given to a single paper. It was suggested that bylaws be changed to allow for more than 1 paper. A question was raised 2021 Officer Nominations—Aylin Yener about honorable mention, and it was decided that this topic can be discussed at a later time. Next presentation was given by President Yener about 2021 officer nominations. The two candidates for the 2nd VP are Matthieu Bloch The following motions were issued. and Stark Draper. The candidate for VP is Christina Fragouli, and the candidate for President is Wei Yu. President Yener explained Motion: That a 2020 Information Theory Society Paper that the request for votes will be sent to BoG after this meeting. Award be given to the paper: E. Abbe, A. S. Bandeira, and G. Hall, “Exact Recovery in the Stochastic Block Model”, in Treasurer’s Report—Aaron Wagner IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 471–487, Jan. 2016. Next presentation was given by Aaron Wagner in his role as the Society’s Treasurer. Aaron first went over the IEEE accounting, Motion: That the 2020 Information Theory Society Paper explaining how surplus from the general funds get split evenly Award to be given to the paper: E. Mossel, J. Neeman, and A. to new initiatives and to reserves. He stated that of the surplus Sly, “Consistency Thresholds for the Planted Bisection funds, only 50% of it goes to the funds for the following year and Model”, in Electronic Journal of Probability, no. 21, pp. 1–24, the rest goes to hard to touch reserves. 2016. Next, Aaron went over the 2019 general funds. He stated that at Both motions passed. the time of ITA 2019, the expected budgeted surplus was $46K, which over the course of the following year gradually got revised Nominations and Appointments to be $573K in April 2020. He explained that the sources of the Committee—Elza Erkip changes in expectations are due to the following: Transactions revenue increased by $300K, while the costs decreased by $70K; con- The presentation was given by Elza Erkip as the Chair of the Nom- ference publications revenue increased by $92K; ISIT 2019 in Paris inations and Appointments Committee. had a surplus increase of $63K; IEEE Tax decreased by $35.5K;

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 9 newsletter costs decreased by $12K; dues increased by $2.8K; and pointed out that there are already many providers for content deliv- committees overspent by $5.5K. Aaron next went into more detail ery networks such as Amazon. Regarding video conferencing inte- regarding the Transactions trends, and explained how at the time gration, it was proposed to replace the current ad-hoc solutions with of ISIT 2018 in Vail the outlook looked dire, but that the numbers the integration into our website. It was pointed out the existing grass have improved since. He also clarified that this is not an account- efforts in this direction, such as Salim’s Shannon Seminar Series and ing fluke as there is more money across the board in Transactions. online presentations by Distinguished Lecturers, have already been very successful. It was also pointed out that top providers (Zoom, He then went over the Special Projects for 2019, totaling $264.5K BlueJeans, Webex) now offer APIs. Regarding support for events, it in the budget, specifying for each project, the leader of the project was proposed that the current distributed operation be replaced by and the associated cost. Of the budgeted $264.5K, $175K have been easy and user-friendly hosting within unified portal. spent, as some ISIT 2019 related projects are still being processed. Matthieu next presented the arguments for the change which in- Next, Aaron went over the 2020 General Funds. At the time of ITA cluded: easy archiving, reduced burden for organizers, consistent 2020, the expected budgeted surplus was $243K. As of this meet- look over time, and the opportunity to invest now, when the funds ing, it is $232K. The changes are due to cancelations of certain in- are available. He also pointed out that larger cost is expected up- person events that increased the expected surplus, and new opera- front but that the maintenance will be much smaller, compared tional costs of JSAIT and reduced membership fees that decreased to starting from scratch each time. Matthieu then went over the the expected surplus. Regarding the 2020 Special Projects, Aaron estimated cost for each of the proposed items. stated that some previously approved projects have become inop- erative due to the pandemic. As a result, the sum total for the re- The following motion was issued: maining projects is $65K. Aaron encouraged the members to provide additional ideas for 2020 Special Projects and to start thinking Motion: To support the activities of the FITS initiative with about possible projects for 2021. a budget of $51K.

Next, Aaron discussed the status of the Padovani Fund. He President Yener asked for remote meeting support of $10k, and the stated that Roberto Padovani generously donated $110K over 5 friendly amendment was issued to increase the requested budget years, and that the Society is permitted to spend $10K/year on to up to $60K. Schools. He asked the Board whether we should think of this as a short-term gift to effect a immediate impact or a self-sustaining There was a brief discussion where a BoG member suggested to endowment. He stated that the IEEE Foundation treats it as a gift go bold in the new initiative, and another BoG member suggest- to be used until spent, whereas we treat it operationally as an ed video and tutorial combination for the new magazine. It was endowment, and that this conflict creates issues. A BoG member asked how does the new initiative relate to the on-going efforts led suggested that Roberto Padovani be brought into the loop re- by Brian Kurkoski and the Online Committee. Matthieu answered garding this matter. Another BoG member suggested to make it that there will be overlap and how much of it will depend on the an endowment for raising visibility. President Yener stated that cost and Brian’s work. It was also suggested that to add hardware the detailed discussion is be deferred to the October meeting. such as microphone for hybrid events. The motion was then revised to approve the budget of up to $65k. Future of the Information Theory Society (FITS) Initiative—Aylin Yener The following motion was issued: and Matthieu Bloch Motion: To support the activities of the FITS initiative with a budget of $65K. Next presentation was the FITS report provided by President Yener and Matthieu Bloch. President Yener went over the execu- Motion passed. tive summary that included the need for a unified and long-term online presence of ITSoc, unified portal for all our online activities, Online Committee—Brian Kurkoski and calls for renewed investment in web technologies. President Yener thanked the Ad Hoc Committee members: Erik Agrell, Mat- The next presentation was given by Brian Kurkoski as the Chair thieu Bloch, Salim El Rouhayeb, Brian Kurkoski, Henry Pfister, of the Online Committee. Brian went over the status of the web- Anand Sarwate, Aylin Yener, and Wei Yu, for their hard work in site itsoc.org upgrade, highlighting the high cost up to date; preparing the report. She went over the current situation and vi- the vendor has been paid $70K for incomplete upgrade thus far sion, stating that while we won’t go back to the business as usual, and is asking for additional $30K. In light of this situation, the the current crisis has created an opportunity to think forward and online committee asked for the upgrade of the website and to to create a unified FITS vision for the Society. transfer of the web platform from Plone to Drupal. Brian de- scribed planned features for the upgrade and showed what the In terms of realizing the vision, Matthieu then identified four short new page would look like, with various items of interest to cur- term goals: 1) IEEE authentication, 2) Hosting multimedia resources, rent and prospective members. He then went over the quotes 3) Video conferencing integration, and 4) Support for events. Regard- provided by different vendors for the upgrade. The following ing IEEE authentication, a new Single Sign On was proposed to im- motion was issued. prove membership value. Regarding hosting of multimedia resources, the proposal was to explore alternative media solutions beyond Motion: The Online Committee requests 1) $73K to develop the currently used YouTube in other to better serve the constituency a new site for itsoc.org and 2) $5K to migrate data from the at large and to provide a unified portal for various materials. It was old site to the new site for a total of $78K.

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 10

The motion passed. In regards to the second issue on quantum information theory, Andrea stated that is moving towards completion, and that Upon a question from a BoG member regarding how long the up- the final acceptances are undergoing. She thanked the Lead grade will take, Brian stated that 3-4 months is likely feasible. Guest Editors Andreas Winter and Emina Soljanin for leading this effort. After a short break, the meeting resumed. The third special issue is on statistical inference and estima- EiC IEEE Transactions on Information tion, and the Lead Guest Editor is Devavrat Shah. The submis- Theory—Igal Sason sion deadline was in May 2020. The fourth special issue is on Privacy and Security of Information Systems, and the Lead Next presentation was given by Igal Sason in his capacity as the Guest Editor is H. Vincent Poor. The submission deadline is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. August 1st, 2020. The fifth special issue is on sequential, ac- Igal stated that there are currently 60 associate editors, and that tive, and reinforcement learning, and the Lead Guest Editors there is a need to add more. He then presented the 7 candidates are Vincent Tan and Yao Xie. The submission deadline is Oc- in the needed areas. A BoG member asked about the gender and tober 1st, 2020. Andrea also stated that there will be 4 special geographic diversity of the candidates. Igal clarified that among issues starting next year. the candidates, 1 is female, 2 are from Asia, 2 are from Europe, 1 is from Israel, and the rest are from the US. Andrea next went over the JSAIT Editorial Board and stated that since all Senior Editors were appointed in 2019, some may be Motion was issued for each of the following candidates. staggered for continuity purposes. She then went over the list of members of the Industrial Advisory Board, and stated that they Motion: To elect Claude Carlet as an Associate Editor for have provided excellent inputs so far. She then went over the list Sequences. of members of the Steering Committee and thanked them for their service. Motion: To elect Guang Gong as an Associate Editor for Sequences. Next, Andrea discussed the issues regarding page charges. She stated that submitted papers cannot exceed 35 pages in length, Motion: To elect Marco Lops as an Associate Editor for and that some authors seemed unaware of page charges for JSAIT. Detection and Estimation. In regards to the initial issue, she stated that several authors requested to remove content from their accepted paper to reduce the Motion: To elect David Mitchell as an Associate Editor for paper to 10 pages rather than pay the page charges, which was in Coding Theory (emphasis on LDPC codes). turn handled by Andrea on a case by case basis. Appendices were moved to supplemental material. In the cases where page reduc- Motion: To elect Changho Suh as an Associate Editor for tion entailed removing valuable content in the main body of the Statistical Learning. paper, which degrades the paper and might deter authors from future JSAIT submission, as Andrea explained, she waived the page Motion: To elect Himanshu Tyagi as an Associate Editor for charges to retain the content and she waived page charges for all Shannon Theory. tutorials (as EiC prerogative).

Motion: To elect Eitan Yaakobi as an Associate Editor for Next, Andrea presented page charge recommendations to increase Coding Theory (emphasis on coding for storage). the number of free pages in JSAIT regular papers from 10 to 12, and to have no page charges for tutorial papers. All motions passed. A short discussion ensued. A BoG member suggested to increase EiC IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in the limit to 14 pages. A BoG member asked and Andrea clarified Information Theory—Andrea Goldsmith that there were over 50 submissions for the first issue, and about 20-30 for the next two. She also clarified that the charge per excess Next presentation was given by Andrea Goldsmith in her capac- page is $200, and that the average length of non-tutorial papers in ity as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in the first issue was 14.2 pages. Information Theory (JSAIT). Andrea first went over the executive summary, stating that the first special issue is already published, The following motion was issued. the second and third issues are on track, and that the CFPs for Motion: to increase the number of free pages in JSAIT regu- fourth and fifth are published. She stated that the guest editorial lar papers from 10 to 12, and to have no page charges for teams are performing well, that startup glitches on Manuscript tutorial papers. Central are mostly fixed, that JASIT has received great support from the IEEE staff, and that the launch appears successful so far. The motion passed.

In regards to the first issue, she said that the sub-to-pub time was 6 months. She thanked the guest editorial board, especially the Lead ITSoc Schools Committee—Stark Draper Guest Editor Alex Dimakis for successfully handling the inaugural issue. She stated that this issue had 3 tutorials, and that there Next presentation was given by Stark Draper as the Chair of will be at least 1 tutorial per issue moving forward. the ITSoc Schools Committee. Stark thanked Parastoo Sadeghi,

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 11

Christina Fragouli, for their dedicated service on the committee as the formal proposal has been submitted and is under review. For well as Aylin Yener for her help. ISIT 2024 to be held in New York a proposed formal proposal has been deferred to a future BoG meeting. For ISIT 2021 to be held He then went over the status of the schools. 2019 schools had in Melbourne, Australia, an update will be provided by Parastoo nothing to report. Four schools were planned for 2020, and are Sadeghi in this meeting. all deferred. ESIT 2020 was deferred to fall, and the organizers are looking into the possibility of making it virtual. The re- For ITW 2020, more specifically, Vijay stated that the new dates maining schools, which are NASIT 2020, EASIT 2020, and India are Apr. 11-15, 2021, and that all involved people have confirmed 2020, are all deferred to 2021. He then went over the imple- their participation. It is not yet decided whether the conference mentation of the virtual ESIT 2020. He stated that the organiz- will be in-person, remote, or in a hybrid mode. The current sub- ers will look to ISIT 2020 plenaries as a model and that they mission window is September 30 to October 30, 2020. Vijay also believe it should and can be “more than downloading a few went over the list of confirmed plenary speakers, organizers of good videos”; he also stated some pros and cons of holding the special sessions, and tutorial organizers. He stated that the the school virtually. Stark stated that the Schools Committee is permission was granted from the IEEE to keep the “2020” in the in favor of the ESIT’20 organizers exploring the possibility of name of the conference. a virtual ESIT’20, and that the organizers and the School Com- mittee request input from the BoG. In regards of the named For ITW 2021, Vijay stated that the decision will be made to either lectureships, Stark stated that the Padovani and Goldsmith postpone the conference or to convert it to online/hybrid format. Lectures are delivered at schools. Padovani was to be deliv- The current submission window is March to April, 2021. He re- ered at NASIT’20 and Goldsmith at ESIT’20, and that the plan iterated that the committee hopes that ITW Kanazawa will happen for the named lectureships in 2021 will be discussed as part of as planned in Oct 2021. the Membership Committee report. The committee is monitoring the situation for international trav- Diversity and Inclusion el, worldwide COVID-19 infection, as well as local regulations on Committee—Stark Draper social distancing and related events. They are currently discussing three scenarios: onsite, online/hybrid, and postponement, The following presentation was also given by Stark Draper, in his each with its own timeline. The organizing committee plans to role as the Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. re-assess the situation in September, particularly with regard to the venue contract. Stark started off by thanking all the members of the precursor D&I committee for their service, and going over the procedures Next, Vijay stated that the report on ISIT 2020 Experience will be from the Bylaws for constituting the committee and adding presented at a future BoG meeting, possibly the Fall 2020 BoG. new members. Afterwards, Vijay went over the proposal for ITW to be held in The following motion was issued: Goa, India in 2022. He went over the list of members of the organizing committee, details of the location, and the list of potential Motion: To approve the proposed four members of the topics of interest. He stated that given the current and potentially Diversity and Inclusion Committee, who are: Todd Coleman, future world-wide circumstances, this conference, and others, Vinod Prabhakaran, Nihar Shah, and Michele Wigger. would be held in hybrid or all-virtual mode.

The motion passed. Next, Vijay presented the update for ISIT 2021 in Australia. He went over the timeline of various options, discussing in par- Next, Stark went over the Committee’s mandate and schedule for ticular various fees associated with venue cancelations at given this year. He stated that the committee is responsible for creating points in time. He stated that three major contracts have al- and executing an ongoing diversity and inclusion strategy, pre- ready been signed with the IEEE. The current focus is to hold senting progress, plans, data, and metrics annually to the Board. ISIT in person (viewed as Plan A). Here, things are on track: He also stated that the committee is charged with ensuring that monthly organizer meetings are conducted, website is up with Information Theory Society events and processes are inclusive, fair amount of content: https://2021.ieee-isit.org, and there is welcoming and safe for everyone in the field of information theory a plan to advertise as much as possible at ISIT 2020 and in the and with developing and overseeing codes of conduct and best next 6-7 months. Organizing committee is also discussing fall- practices for all Society activities, including conferences, schools, back Plan B. In this case ISIT would be held virtually, similar and committees. It is anticipated that the committee will provide a to ISIT 2020, and possibly more interactive. The committee has report update at the next BoG meeting in October. contacted IEEE Conference Contracts and IEEE Legal to get ad- vice on liabilities, timelines and insurance options. Vijay went Conference Committee—Vijay Kumar over various scenarios and outlined the dollar amount of values and schedules of liabilities and sponsorship. He also presented Next presentation was given by Vijay Kumar on the behalf of the dollar amounts for base registration estimates to break even (as- Conference Committee. He started off by thanking the commit- suming virtualization platform or other costs will be added later tee members for their service. Next, he went over the key status to break even) for Virtual ISIT 2021. update of ITWs and ISITs. ITW 2020 in Riva del Garda, Italy is postponed to 2021. Format of the ITW 2021 in Kanazawa, Japan There was a brief discussion about the estimated costs in terms will be decided in Sep. 2020. For ITW 2022 to be held in Goa, India, of cancelation fees and what aspects of the cost could be

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 12 re-negotiated, or potentially have the venues changed to the Student and Outreach Subcommittee—Martina university setting. Vijay stated that he will communicate back Cardone with the committee and will update the board in the near future. Next presentation was given by Martina Cardone on behalf of IEEE BITS The Information Theory the Student and Outreach Subcommittee. First, she went over the Magazine—Christina Fragouli Meet the Shannon Lecturer video details and presented a trailer. This video is an exclusive recorded interview—organized into Next presentation was given by Christina Fragouli in her capacity three parts and conducted by Dr. Min-Hsiu Hsieh and Dr. David as the Chair of the Steering Committee for the new IT magazine. Sutter—where Dr. Charles H. Bennett shares his past academic ex- She started off by thanking committee members for their service. periences, and his insights regarding the past, present, and future She went over the timeline of the magazine launch, highlighting of quantum information theory research. that in February 2020 Phase II documents were reviewed and a positive TAB decision was made. EiC selection is scheduled for Next, Martina presented a description and a video trailer for on- Summer 2020, and the first publication is scheduled for 2021. She line teaching and learning. This was also an exclusive recorded stated that the magazine is ready to start and that the goal is to interview—organized into four parts—where the committee increase the visibility of our field and community. reached out to 14 members of the Information Theory community (students, postdocs, faculty) and asked them to share their per- The following motions were issued: spective on online teaching and learning.

Motion: To elect Robert Calderbank as the inaugural Editor Afterwards, Martina went over the student video exposition. In in Chief of the IT Magazine. this special online challenge, students registered to ISIT were able to team up with students from other universities to create videos The motion passed. explaining an easy concept related to information theory to high school students. Three winning videos were selected and the stu- Motion: To approve $15K for the IT Magazine to start opera- dents who made them received a $300 award each. It was suggest- tions such as creating a logo and starts promotions. ed by BoG that these videos could also be made available publicly for high school student outreach. The motion passed. Pilot Videos Committee—Matthieu Bloch Membership Committee—Christina Fragouli Next presentation was given by Matthieu Bloch on the behalf of Next presentation was also given by Christina Fragouli, this the Pilot Videos Committee. He went over the current statistics time on the behalf of the Membership Committee. Christina of the available videos that have been made thus far, highlighting stated that upon careful consideration of the membership com- that there have already been more than 100,000 views. He then mittee, the Chapter of the Year was awarded to the North Mace- went over the work in progress which included: several meetings donia chapter. with Brit Cruise; discussion around several topics of new videos to be made (synchronization, magnetic recording, and information Next, Christina discussed the status of the Distinguished Lectur- propagation in graphs). He stated that the objective is to release ers (DLs), Padovani and Goldsmith lecturers. She first recalled these new videos by the end of year. that a motion was passed on March 23, 2020 to suspend the DL program until further notice. Massey Award—Tara Javidi

The following motions were presented. Next presentation was given by Tara Javidi in her capacity as the Chair of the Massey Award Committee. Massey Award is given Motion 1: To extend the current term of the DLs for one year annually to an outstanding young scholar within 10 years of the (this would apply to both the 2019-2020 and the 2020–2021 DLs). completion of their highest degree. Tara thanked other committee members: Christina Fragouli, Sid Jaggi, and Ram Zamir for their Motion 2: To require a recorded lecture from each DL (to be service. Tara stated that there were 8 highly qualified candidates. uploaded on the society website/youtube channel). Upon very careful deliberations, the committee selected Yuri Poly- ansky as the recipient of the Massey Award for his outstanding Motion 3: To select no new DLs for 2021. achievements in research and teaching.

Motion 4: To extend the current term of the Padovani lec- Cover Thesis Award—Christina Fragouli turer for a year. The following presentation was given by Christina Fragouli in Upon further discussion the four motions were withdrawn. her capacity as the Chair of the Cover Thesis Award Committee. Christina thanked the other committee members: Haim Permuter, The following motion was then issued by President Yener. Michele Wigger, Meir Feder, and Wei Wu for their service on this committee. She then went over the selection process, stating that 6 Motion: To extend the meeting by 1 hour. eligible theses were considered. Based on the detailed discussions amongst the committee members, the committee unanimously The motion passed. agreed to give the Cover Dissertation award to: Pengkun Yang,

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 13 for his thesis titled: ``Polynomial Methods in Statistical Inference: the new IT magazine. There was a brief discussion regarding the Theory and Practice.” membership on the board of governors for the Editors-in-Chief of the main IT publications. Constitution and Bylaws Committee— Elza Erkip Going Forward as a Community—Aylin Yener

Next presentation was given by Elza Erkip on behalf of the Con- Next topic on the agenda was how do we go forward as a com- stitution and Bylaws Committee whose members are Elza (chair) munity and was introduced by President Yener. There was a dis- and Emina Soljanin, as Senior Past President and Junior Past Presi- cussion amongst the BoG members regarding what could be some dent, respectively. Elza next discussed the status of the bylaws, productive ways of strengthening our community. The following highlighting that extensive revision of the Bylaws occurred in motion was issued. 2019, and that this year revisions will be relatively minor. She stated that possible changes would be a) regarding the paper awards Motion: to support the production of an educational video committee as the condition of AEs serving in the last three years in the amount of $15K. may be too limiting, and the term limit could be lowered to two years, b) introduction to post-humous awards, and c) resolution The motion passed. of conflict of interest in committees. She next stated that the Pub- lications Committee needs to be updated with the introduction of Meeting adjourned at 4 pm EST.

A Tribute to Kamil Sh. Zigangirov

Kamil Shamilivich Zigangirov, Professor Emeritus Professor Emeritus at Lund University. After re- at Lund University, Lund, Sweden, passed away tirement Kamil worked as a Guest Researcher on March 16, 2020. Since Kamil had been seriously at several universities in many different coun- ill for some time this sad message did not come tries. In particular, he spent five extended visits unexpected. Even so losing a good old friend and at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. colleague leads to a time of reflection and recol- During his long career as a Professor and Guest lection of many stimulating discussions and enjoy- Researcher, he was always very generous in able moments. sharing his time and research insights with his colleagues and their graduate students, and in Kamil was born on January 29, 1938, in Ufa in the many cases he served as an unofficial disserta- Ural Mountains. When Kamil was two years old tion advisor. his family moved to Moscow where his father worked as an economist and his mother as a medi- Kamil was a driving force in the information cal doctor and where Kamil got his first ten years theory and error correcting coding research com- of basic education. This was a very successful pe- munity for more than 50 years. His most pro- riod and Kamil received a medal for his results. found contributions were to convolutional cod- Since his main interests were mathematics and physics Kamil con- ing. Through a long series of important papers, he set out much tinued his education at Moscow Physico-Technical Institute and of our modern view of convolutional codes. He pioneered new obtained the Diploma Engineering Degree in 1962. As a natural efficient decoding algorithms for these codes, for example, the next step he joined the Institute of Radio engineering and Elec- stack algorithm, which is both ingenious and simple. He devel- tronics, Moscow, and obtained the Candidate of Technical Science oped back search limits for sequential decoders that establish degree in 1966. Kamil’s education culminated in 1977 when he de- the length of the code trellis paths that must be stored, the first fended the Doctoral Degree of Technical Sciences from the Council theoretical estimate of list algorithm storage for convolutional of Cybernetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The title of his codes that establish the number of paths in storage, the first true doctoral thesis is Procedures of Sequential Decoding, published in a posteriori probability (APP) decoder for tailbiting trellis codes, Russian 1974 by Svjaz, Moscow. and several of the earliest “one way” APP decoders. Kamil’s co- authored textbook “Fundamentals of Convolutional Coding”, Kamil’s professional history started at the Institute for Prob- the 2nd edition of which was published in 2015, contains a com- lems of Information Transmission (IPIT), Moscow, Russia, prehensive exposition of all known results in the field and is con- where during the period 1965–1993 he held positions as a Ju- sidered the bible of convolutional coding. nior, Senior, Leading, and Main Scientist. During 1988–1991 he held a part time position as Professor. In 1993 he was appointed Kamil also pioneered research on low-density parity-check to the Chair of Telecommunication Theory at Lund University, (LDPC) convolutional codes, recently rechristened spatially a position he held until his retirement in 2003 when he became coupled LDPC codes, a field of study that has captured the

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 14 attention of researchers throughout the world due to their ca- Kamil showed professional leadership in his role as the instru- pacity-approaching performance. Consistent with his reputa- mental organizer from the Russian side of the Joint Swedish-So- tion for ingenuity and simplicity, Kamil achieved his remarkable viet Workshops on Information Theory. This series, totaling seven results on LDPC convolutional codes by a clever, but non-obvi- altogether, began in 1983, and alternated between sites in Russia ous, “unwrapping” of the parity-check matrix of an LDPC block and Sweden. These workshops were of exceptionally high quality code into a diagonal (convolutional) form, in the process achiev- and attracted first class researchers from all over the world. They ing a substantial “convolutional gain” in performance without were the largest single interaction between Soviet and Western added decoding complexity. In recognition of his contributions communication theorists during the Cold War period. to this area, Kamil and his co-authors were awarded the 2012 IEEE Information Theory Society and Communication Society Kamil is survived by his widow Ira along with his two children, Joint Paper Award. Dima and Valja, and their families.

Characteristic of all Kamil’s work was that his code constructions Rolf Johannesson, Professor Emeritus, Lund Univ., Sweden, and decoding algorithms were novel and simpler than earlier [email protected] ones. They have played a major role in forming the present theoretical understanding of encoding and decoding processes. Ka- Daniel J. Costello, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Univ. Notre Dame, mil was also a stickler for mathematical precision, often offering USA, [email protected] constructive criticism of results that made claims without rigor- ous proof. In this respect, he sometimes displayed a playful sense Irina E. Bocharova, Assoc. Professor, ITMO univ., St.-Petersburg, of humor by drawing distinctions between “strong proofs” and Russia, [email protected] “weak proofs”. Boris D. Kudryashov, Professor, ITMO univ., St.-Petersburg, Rus- Kamil played a major role in guiding Soviet communication theo- sia, [email protected] ry. During his 28 years at the IPIT he worked with most of its major players. At the same time he maintained liaisons with Western Michael Lentmaier, Assoc. Professor, Lund Univ., Sweden, michael scientists through trips and correspondence. [email protected]

President’s Column (continued from page 1) have been able to start a number of initiatives, particularly in the there was in me an invincible summer”1. And I remain optimistic digital domain, that will continue to flourish in the coming years that 2021 will be even better. I am grateful to the board of gover- and have long-term positive impact in our community. All indi- nors and the officers for their hard work and support through- cations are that the society is in a better place than it was at the out this year. Despite some challenges, the community remains beginning of the year, and that is the best outcome any president strong and will get stronger, and there is cause for continued opti- can hope for. mism. All of that said, as we near the end of the year, I find myself looking forward to next year, and being able to focus on research As I proudly hand over the leadership to Wei, I would like to con- again. In that regard, I would like to acknowledge my collabora- clude my last column with a few personal notes. I remain enthu- tors and my current and recently graduated students for being so siastic about serving our society and the profession both, and will patient with me this year and in a sense sharing my sacrifice, as continue to do so in my roles as past president and in others in- well as my colleagues at my home institution for the same. Finally cluding digital initiatives and technical posts such as editorships, I would like to thank all of you, our members, for your support of conferences and evaluations. I continue to believe that profession- the society, and members and research community at large who al service is not about building resume, but about building com- choose IEEE Information Theory Society outlets for dissemination munity, and should be taken on with that understanding. For me, of their research. this year was a departure from the past, in that, in contrast to my previous posts where I have been able to balance my day job and Stay well and healthy. volunteer service, this year, most of my awake moments needed to be focused on our society. I took it in stride with the understanding of an unusual year and aimed at continuing our positive slope. 1Return to Tipasa (1952), The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Albert As Camus says “In the middle of winter, I at least discovered that Camus, Vintage International.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 15 Recent Publications

IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

TableSEPTEMBER of content 2020 for volumes VOLUME 66(9), 66 66(10), NUMBER66(11), 966(12) IETTAW (ISSN 0018-9448)

Vol. 66(9): Sep. 2020.

CODING THEORY AND TECHNIQUES H. Chen, X. He, J. Weng, and L. Xu New Constructions of Subspace Codes Using Subsets of MRD Codes in Several Blocks 5317 D. Xie and J. Luo Asymmetric Single Magnitude Four Error Correcting Codes 5322 T. Hayashi and K. Yasunaga On the List Decodability of Insertions and Deletions 5335 Y. M. Chee, H. M. Kiah, and H. Wei Efﬁcient and Explicit Balanced Primer Codes 5344 S. Lin, K. Abdel-Ghaffar, J. Li, and K. Liu A Scheme for Collective Encoding and Iterative Soft-Decision Decoding of 5358 Cyclic Codes of Prime Lengths: Applications to Reed–Solomon, BCH, and Quadratic Residue Codes R. Trombetti and F. Zullo On the List Decodability of Rank Metric Codes 5379 Z. Heng, C. Ding, and W. Wang Optimal Binary Linear Codes From Maximal Arcs 5387 L. Ma and C. Xing Constructive Asymptotic Bounds of Locally Repairable Codes via Function Fields 5395 S. Mesnager, Y. Qi, H. Ru, and C. Tang Minimal Linear Codes From Characteristic Functions 5404 T. L. Alderson On the Weights of General MDS Codes 5414 C. Ding and C. Tang Inﬁnite Families of Near MDS Codes Holding t-Designs 5419

SHANNON THEORY N. Helal, M. Bloch, and A. Nosratinia Cooperative Resolvability and Secrecy in the Cribbing Multiple-Access Channel 5429 J. Liu and A. Özgür Capacity Upper Bounds for the Relay Channel via Reverse Hypercontractivity 5448 P. Venkatesh, S. Dutta, and P. Grover Information Flow in Computational Systems 5456 D. Data, G. R. Kurri, J. Ravi, and V. M. Prabhakaran Interactive Secure Function Computation 5492 S.-W. Ho, L. Ling, C. W. Tan, and R. W. Yeung Proving and Disproving Information Inequalities: Theory and Scalable Algorithms 5522 A. Américo, MHR. Khouzani, and P. Malacaria Conditional Entropy and Data Processing: An Axiomatic Approach Based on 5537 Core-Concavity QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY A. Anshu, M. Hayashi, and N. A. Warsi Secure Communication Over Fully Quantum Gel’fand-Pinsker Wiretap Channel 5548 R. Jain, C. A. Miller, and Y. Shi Parallel Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution 5567 C. Huang, M. Newman, and M. Szegedy Explicit Lower Bounds on Strong Quantum Simulation 5585 M. X. Cao and P. O. Vontobel Bounding and Estimating the Classical Information Rate of Quantum 5601 Channels With Memory Z. Baghali Khanian and A. Winter Distributed Compression of Correlated Classical-Quantum Sources or: The 5620 Price of Ignorance A. S. Holevo Gaussian Maximizers for Quantum Gaussian Observables and Ensembles 5634

COMMUNICATIONS A. Bazco-Nogueras, P. de Kerret, D. Gesbert, On the Degrees-of-Freedom of the K-User Distributed Broadcast Channel 5642 and N. Gresset L.Li,S.M.Moser,L.Wang,andM.Wigger On the Capacity of MIMO Optical Wireless Channels 5660

COMMUNICATION NETWORKS R. Cavallari, S. Toumpis, R. Verdone, Packet Speed and Cost in Mobile Wireless Delay-Tolerant Networks 5683 and I. Kontoyiannis Y. H. Ezzeldin, A. Sengupta, and C. Fragouli Wireless Network Simpliﬁcation: The Performance of Routing 5703 R. D. Yates The Age of Information in Networks: Moments, Distributions, and Sampling 5712 CRYPTOGRAPHY B. Doerr and M. Künnemann Improved Protocols and Hardness Results for the Two-Player Cryptogenography Problem 5729 L. Budaghyan, C. Carlet, T. Helleseth, On the Distance Between APN Functions 5742 and N. Kaleyski M. F. Ezerman, H. T. Lee, S. Ling, K. Nguyen, Provably Secure Group Signature Schemes From Code-Based Assumptions 5754 and H. Wang SEQUENCES J. Zhang, S. Gao, and C.-A. Zhao Linear Complexity of a Family of Binary pq2-Periodic Sequences From Euler Quotients 5774 P. Ellingsen, P. Felke, C. Riera, P. St˘anic˘a, C-Differentials, Multiplicative Uniformity, and (Almost) Perfect c-Nonlinearity 5781 and A. Tkachenko SOURCE CODING December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter S. Vatedka and A. Tchamkerten Local Decode and Update for Big Data Compression 5790 LEARNING J. Chen, D. Liu, and X. Li Nonconvex Rectangular Matrix Completion via Gradient Descent Without 5806 2, Regularization N. Takbiri, A. Houmansadr, D. L. Goeckel, Privacy∞ of Dependent Users Against Statistical Matching 5842 and H. Pishro-Nik SIGNAL PROCESSING J. M. Medina, F. R. Dobarro, and B. Cernuschi-Frías Convergence of p-Stable Random Fractional Wavelet Series and Some of Its Properties 5866 S. Nayer, P. Narayanamurthy, and N. Vaswani Provable Low Rank Phase Retrieval 5875 B. Bernstein, S. Liu, C. Papadaniil, Sparse Recovery Beyond Compressed Sensing: Separable Nonlinear Inverse Problems 5904 and C. Fernandez-Granda B. Hao, A. Zhang, and G. Cheng Sparse and Low-Rank Tensor Estimation via Cubic Sketchings 5927 C. Huang, M. Newman, and M. Szegedy Explicit Lower Bounds on Strong Quantum Simulation 5585 M. X. Cao and P. O. Vontobel Bounding and Estimating the Classical Information Rate of Quantum 5601 Channels With Memory Z. Baghali Khanian and A. Winter Distributed Compression of Correlated Classical-Quantum Sources or: The 5620 Price of Ignorance A. S. Holevo Gaussian Maximizers for Quantum Gaussian Observables and Ensembles 5634

COMMUNICATION NETWORKS R. Cavallari, S. Toumpis, R. Verdone, Packet Speed and Cost in Mobile Wireless Delay-Tolerant Networks 5683 and I. Kontoyiannis Y. H. Ezzeldin, A. Sengupta, and C. Fragouli Wireless Network Simpliﬁcation: The Performance of Routing 5703 R. D. Yates The Age of Information in Networks: Moments, Distributions, and Sampling 5712 CRYPTOGRAPHY B. Doerr and M. Künnemann Improved Protocols and Hardness Results for the Two-Player Cryptogenography Problem 5729 L. Budaghyan, C. Carlet, T. Helleseth, On the Distance Between APN Functions 5742 and N. Kaleyski M. F. Ezerman, H. T. Lee, S. Ling, K. Nguyen, Provably Secure Group Signature Schemes From Code-Based Assumptions 5754 and H. Wang SEQUENCES 16 J. Zhang, S. Gao, and C.-A. Zhao Linear Complexity of a Family of Binary pq2-Periodic Sequences From Euler Quotients 5774 P. Ellingsen, P. Felke, C. Riera, P. St˘anic˘a, C-Differentials, Multiplicative Uniformity, and (Almost) Perfect c-Nonlinearity 5781 and A. Tkachenko SOURCE CODING S. Vatedka and A. Tchamkerten Local Decode and Update for Big Data Compression 5790 LEARNING J. Chen, D. Liu, and X. Li Nonconvex Rectangular Matrix Completion via Gradient Descent Without 5806 2, Regularization N. Takbiri, A. Houmansadr, D. L. Goeckel, Privacy∞ of Dependent Users Against Statistical Matching 5842 and H. Pishro-Nik SIGNAL PROCESSING J. M. Medina, F. R. Dobarro, and B. Cernuschi-Frías Convergence of p-Stable Random Fractional Wavelet Series and Some of Its Properties 5866 S. Nayer, P. Narayanamurthy, and N. Vaswani Provable Low Rank Phase Retrieval 5875 B. Bernstein, S. Liu, C. Papadaniil, Sparse Recovery Beyond Compressed Sensing: Separable Nonlinear Inverse Problems 5904 and C. Fernandez-Granda B. Hao, A. Zhang, and G. Cheng Sparse and Low-Rank Tensor Estimation via Cubic Sketchings 5927

OCTOBER 2020 VOLUME 66 NUMBER 10 IETTAW (ISSN 0018-9448)

Vol. 66(10): Oct. 2020. CODING THEORY AND CODING TECHNIQUES X. Guang, R. W. Yeung, and F.-W. Fu Local-Encoding-Preserving Secure Network Coding 5965 Y. Duan and Y. Li An Improved Decoding Algorithm to Decode Quadratic Residue Codes 5995 Based on the Difference of Syndromes I. A. Kadampot, M. Tahmasbi, and M. R. Bloch Multilevel-Coded Pulse-Position Modulation for Covert Communications Over 6001 Binary-Input Discrete Memoryless Channels A. Dehghan and A. H. Banihashemi On Finding Bipartite Graphs With a Small Number of Short Cycles and Large Girth 6024 A. Dehghan and A. H. Banihashemi On Computing the Number of Short Cycles in Bipartite Graphs Using the Spectrum 6037 of the Directed Edge Matrix W. Song, K. Cai, and K. A. Schouhamer Immink Sequence-Subset Distance and Coding for Error Control in DNA-Based Data Storage 6048 S. Gopi, V. Guruswami, and S. Yekhanin Maximally Recoverable LRCs: A Field Size Lower Bound and Constructions for 6066 Few Heavy Parities M. Cheraghchi, R. Gabrys, O. Milenkovic, Coded Trace Reconstruction 6084 and J. Ribeiro T. Can, N. Rengaswamy, R. Calderbank, Kerdock Codes Determine Unitary 2-Designs 6104 and H. D. Pﬁster G. A. Miyamoto and M. Firer Obtaining Binary Perfect Codes Out of Tilings 6121 V. Guruswami, L. Jin, and C. Xing Constructions of Maximally Recoverable Local Reconstruction Codes via Function Fields 6133 I. Haviv Task-Based Solutions to Embedded Index Coding 6144

SHANNON THEORY G. J. Op ’t Veld and M. Gastpar Caching (Bivariate) Gaussians 6150 S. Watanabe A Classiﬁcation of Functions in Multiterminal Distributed Computing 6169 H. Boche, R. F. Schaefer, and H. V. Poor Identiﬁcation Capacity of Channels With Feedback: Discontinuity Behavior, 6184 Super-Activation, and Turing Computability P. Sen, S. H. Lim, and Y.-H. Kim On the Optimal Achievable Rates for Linear Computation With Random 6200 Homologous Codes N. Goela and M. Raginsky Channel Polarization Through the Lens of Blackwell Measures 6222 S. H. Lim, C. Feng, A. Pastore, B. Nazer, Compute-Forward for DMCs: Simultaneous Decoding of Multiple Combinations 6242 and M. Gastpar A. Gholami Davoodi and S. Jafar Degrees of Freedom Region of the (M, N1, N2) MIMO Broadcast Channel With Partial 6256 CSIT: An Application of Sum-Set Inequalities Based on Aligned Image Sets Z. Jia and S. A. Jafar On the Asymptotic Capacity of X-Secure T -Private Information Retrieval With 6280 Graph-Based Replicated Storage R. Agrawal Finite-Sample Concentration of the Multinomial in Relative Entropy 6297 A. Gohari, O. Günlü, and G. Kramer Coding for Positive Rate in the Source Model Key Agreement Problem 6303

CRYPTOGRAPHY C. Carlet Handling Vectorial Functions by Means of Their Graph Indicators 6324 G. Spini and G. Zémor Efﬁcient Protocols for Perfectly Secure Message Transmission With Applications to 6340 Secure Network Coding IEEEE. O. Information Kiktenko, A. O. Theory Malyshev, Society M. A. Gavreev, NewsletterLightweight Authentication for Quantum Key Distribution December6354 2020 A. A. Bozhedarov, N. O. Pozhar, M. N. Anufriev, and A. K. Fedorov QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY N. Yu Multipartite Entanglement Certiﬁcation, With or Without Tomography 6369

DETECTION AND ESTIMATION A. Aboubacar and M. El Machkouri Recursive Kernel Density Estimation for Time Series 6378 K. Fokianos, A. Leucht, and M. H. Neumann On Integrated L1 Convergence Rate of an Isotonic Regression Estimator for 6389 Multivariate Observations A. Cerqueira and F. Leonardi Estimation of the Number of Communities in the Stochastic Block Model 6403 L. D. Chamain, P. Dharmawansa, S. Atapattu, Eigenvalue-Based Detection of a Signal in Colored Noise: Finite and Asymptotic Analyses 6413 and C. Tellambura M. Pawlak and U. Stadtmüller Nonparametric Speciﬁcation Testing for Signal Models 6434 T. Northardt A Cramér-Rao Lower Bound Derivation for Passive Sonar Track-Before-Detect 6449 Algorithms

COMMUNICATIONS A. Gholami Davoodi and S. A. Jafar Sum-Set Inequalities From Aligned Image Sets: Instruments for Robust GDoF Bounds 6458 M. Varasteh, B. Rassouli, and B. Clerckx On Capacity-Achieving Distributions for Complex AWGN Channels Under Nonlinear 6488 Power Constraints and Their Applications to SWIPT V. K. Amalladinne, J.-F. Chamberland, A Coded Compressed Sensing Scheme for Unsourced Multiple Access 6509 and K. R. Narayanan COMMUNICATION NETWORKS S. Prakash, A. Reisizadeh, R. Pedarsani, Coded Computing for Distributed Graph Analytics 6534 and A. S. Avestimehr SEQUENCES U. H. Tan, F. Arlery, O. Rabaste, F. Lehmann, A New Lower Bound on the Maximum Correlation of a Set With Mismatched Filters 6555 and J.-P. Ovarlez SOURCE CODING H. Sun and S. A. Jafar On the Capacity of Locally Decodable Codes 6566 Y. Fang and V. Stankovic Codebook Cardinality Spectrum of Distributed Arithmetic Coding for Independent 6580 and Identically-Distributed Binary Sources SIGNAL PROCESSING J. Yi and W. Xu Necessary and Sufﬁcient Null Space Condition for Nuclear Norm Minimization in 6597 Low-Rank Matrix Recovery

CORRECTIONS H. Joudeh and B. Clerckx Corrections to “On the Separability of Parallel MISO Broadcast Channels Under 6605 Partial CSIT: A Degrees of Freedom Region Perspective” S. H. Lim, C. Feng, A. Pastore, B. Nazer, Compute-Forward for DMCs: Simultaneous Decoding of Multiple Combinations 6242 and M. Gastpar A. Gholami Davoodi and S. Jafar Degrees of Freedom Region of the (M, N1, N2) MIMO Broadcast Channel With Partial 6256 CSIT: An Application of Sum-Set Inequalities Based on Aligned Image Sets Z. Jia and S. A. Jafar On the Asymptotic Capacity of X-Secure T -Private Information Retrieval With 6280 Graph-Based Replicated Storage R. Agrawal Finite-Sample Concentration of the Multinomial in Relative Entropy 6297 17 A. Gohari, O. Günlü, and G. Kramer Coding for Positive Rate in the Source Model Key Agreement Problem 6303

CRYPTOGRAPHY C. Carlet Handling Vectorial Functions by Means of Their Graph Indicators 6324 G. Spini and G. Zémor Efﬁcient Protocols for Perfectly Secure Message Transmission With Applications to 6340 Secure Network Coding E. O. Kiktenko, A. O. Malyshev, M. A. Gavreev, Lightweight Authentication for Quantum Key Distribution 6354 A. A. Bozhedarov, N. O. Pozhar, M. N. Anufriev, and A. K. Fedorov QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY N. Yu Multipartite Entanglement Certiﬁcation, With or Without Tomography 6369

CORRECTIONS H. Joudeh and B. Clerckx Corrections to “On the Separability of Parallel MISO Broadcast Channels Under 6605 Partial CSIT: A Degrees of Freedom Region Perspective”

NOVEMBER 2020 VOLUME 66 NUMBER 11 IETTAW (ISSN 0018-9448)

Vol. 66(11): Nov. 2020. SHANNON THEORY A. Lapidoth and G. Marti Encoder-Assisted Communications Over Additive Noise Channels 6607 M. A. Attia, D. Kumar, and R. Tandon The Capacity of Private Information Retrieval From Uncoded Storage 6617 Constrained Databases R. Tamir, N. Merhav, N. Weinberger, and Large Deviations Behavior of the Logarithmic Error Probability of Random 6635 A. Guillén i Fàbregas Codes A. B. Wagner, N. V. Shende, and Y. Altu˘g A New Method for Employing Feedback to Improve Coding Performance 6660 A. Tasbihi and F. R. Kschischang On the Capacity of Waveform Channels Under Square-Law Detection of 6682 Time-Limited Signals S. Chen, M. Effros, and V. Kostina Lossless Source Coding in the Point-to-Point, Multiple Access, and Random 6688 Access Scenarios A. Makur Coding Theorems for Noisy Permutation Channels 6723 CODING THEORY AND CODING TECHNIQUES V. Guruswami, S. V. Lokam, and S. V. M. Jayaraman -MSR Codes: Contacting Fewer Code Blocks for Exact Repair 6749 December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter J. Y. Hyun, J. Lee, and Y. Lee Inﬁnite Families of Optimal Linear Codes Constructed From Simplicial Complexes 6762 Z. Du, C. Li, and S. Mesnager Constructions of Self-Orthogonal Codes From Hulls of BCH Codes and Their Parameters 6774 H. Cai, J. Chrisnata, T. Etzion, M. Schwartz, Network-Coding Solutions for Minimal Combination Networks and Their Sub-Networks 6786 and A. Wachter-Zeh D. Bartoli, M. Montanucci, and L. Quoos Locally Recoverable Codes From Automorphism Group of Function Fields of 6799 Genus g 1 ≥ H. Dau, W. Song, A. Sprintson, and C. Yuen Secure Erasure Codes With Partial Reconstructibility 6809 L. Panek and J. A. Pinheiro General Approach to Poset and Additive Metrics 6823 T.-C. Lin, C.-D. Lee, T.-K. Truong, Y. Chang, and On Decoding Algebraic Codes Using Radical Locators 6835 Y.-H. Chen M. Shi, A. Neri, and P. Solé How Many Weights Can a Quasi-Cyclic Code Have? 6855 S. D. Cardell, M. Firer, and D. Napp Generalized Column Distances 6863 Z. Heng, Q. Wang, and C. Ding Two Families of Optimal Linear Codes and Their Subﬁeld Codes 6872 S. Liu, Y. Chang, and T. Feng Parallel Multilevel Constructions for Constant Dimension Codes 6884 P. J. Dukes, F. Ihringer, and N. Lindzey On the Algebraic Combinatorics of Injections and Its Applications to Injection Codes 6898 NOVEMBER 2020 VOLUME 66 NUMBER 11 IETTAW (ISSN 0018-9448)

SHANNON THEORY A. Lapidoth and G. Marti Encoder-Assisted Communications Over Additive Noise Channels 6607 M. A. Attia, D. Kumar, and R. Tandon The Capacity of Private Information Retrieval From Uncoded Storage 6617 Constrained Databases R. Tamir, N. Merhav, N. Weinberger, and Large Deviations Behavior of the Logarithmic Error Probability of Random 6635 A. Guillén i Fàbregas Codes A. B. Wagner, N. V. Shende, and Y. Altu˘g A New Method for Employing Feedback to Improve Coding Performance 6660 A. Tasbihi and F. R. Kschischang On the Capacity of Waveform Channels Under Square-Law Detection of 6682 Time-Limited Signals S. Chen, M. Effros, and V. Kostina Lossless Source Coding in the Point-to-Point, Multiple Access, and Random 6688 18 Access Scenarios A. Makur Coding Theorems for Noisy Permutation Channels 6723 CODING THEORY AND CODING TECHNIQUES V. Guruswami, S. V. Lokam, and S. V. M. Jayaraman -MSR Codes: Contacting Fewer Code Blocks for Exact Repair 6749 J. Y. Hyun, J. Lee, and Y. Lee Inﬁnite Families of Optimal Linear Codes Constructed From Simplicial Complexes 6762 Z. Du, C. Li, and S. Mesnager Constructions of Self-Orthogonal Codes From Hulls of BCH Codes and Their Parameters 6774 H. Cai, J. Chrisnata, T. Etzion, M. Schwartz, Network-Coding Solutions for Minimal Combination Networks and Their Sub-Networks 6786 and A. Wachter-Zeh D. Bartoli, M. Montanucci, and L. Quoos Locally Recoverable Codes From Automorphism Group of Function Fields of 6799 Genus g 1 ≥ H. Dau, W. Song, A. Sprintson, and C. Yuen Secure Erasure Codes With Partial Reconstructibility 6809 L. Panek and J. A. Pinheiro General Approach to Poset and Additive Metrics 6823 T.-C. Lin, C.-D. Lee, T.-K. Truong, Y. Chang, and On Decoding Algebraic Codes Using Radical Locators 6835 Y.-H. Chen M. Shi, A. Neri, and P. Solé How Many Weights Can a Quasi-Cyclic Code Have? 6855 S. D. Cardell, M. Firer, and D. Napp Generalized Column Distances 6863 Z. Heng, Q. Wang, and C. Ding Two Families of Optimal Linear Codes and Their Subﬁeld Codes 6872 S. Liu, Y. Chang, and T. Feng Parallel Multilevel Constructions for Constant Dimension Codes 6884 P. J. Dukes, F. Ihringer, and N. Lindzey On the Algebraic Combinatorics of Injections and Its Applications to Injection Codes 6898 Y. Tang, Y. Yehezkeally, M. Schwartz, and F. Farnoud Single-Error Detection and Correction for Duplication and Substitution Channels 6908 H. Mahdavifar Polar Coding for Non-Stationary Channels 6920 H. Joudeh, X. Yi, B. Clerckx, and G. Caire On the Optimality of Treating Inter-Cell Interference as Noise: Downlink 6939 Cellular Networks and Uplink-Downlink Duality SOURCE CODING P. Delgosha and V. Anantharam Universal Lossless Compression of Graphical Data 6962 Y. Gutman and A. Spiewak´ Metric Mean Dimension and Analog Compression 6977 J. Wang, B. Yuan, L. Huang, and S. A. Jafar Sum-GDoF of 2-User Interference Channel With Limited Cooperation Under 6999 Finite Precision CSIT Y. Zhou, Y. Yang, Z. Zhou, K. Anand, S. Hu, New Complementary Sets With Low PAPR Property Under Spectral Null Constraints 7022 and Y. L. Guan T. Guo, C. Tian, T. Liu, and R. W. Yeung Weakly Secure Symmetric Multilevel Diversity Coding 7033 P. de Kerret, D. Gesbert, J. Zhang, and P. Elia Optimal DoF of the K-User Broadcast Channel With Delayed and Imperfect Current CSIT 7056

COMMUNICATION NETWORKS R. Eletreby and O. Ya˘gan Connectivity of Inhomogeneous Random K-Out Graphs 7067

CRYPTOGRAPHY L. Budaghyan, T. Helleseth, and N. Kaleyski A New Family of APN Quadrinomials 7081 O. Farràs, T. Kaced, S. Martín, and C. Padró Improving the Linear Programming Technique in the Search for Lower 7088 Bounds in Secret Sharing S. Li, W. Meidl, A. Polujan, A. Pott, C. Riera, Vanishing Flats: A Combinatorial Viewpoint on the Planarity of Functions 7101 and P. St˘anic˘a and Their Application

QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY M. Tahmasbi and M. R. Bloch Covert and Secret Key Expansion Over Quantum Channels Under Collective Attacks 7113

DETECTION AND ESTIMATION Y. Gu and H. Zou Sparse Composite Quantile Regression in Ultrahigh Dimensions With Tuning 7132 Parameter Calibration STATISTICS, LEARNING, SIGNAL PROCESSING B. Zhu, J. Jiao, and D. Tse Deconstructing Generative Adversarial Networks 7155 R. Rajapakshage and M. Pensky Is Clustering Advantageous in Statistical Ill-Posed Linear Inverse Problems? 7180 N. Weinberger and M. Feder k-Vectors: An Alternating Minimization Algorithm for Learning Regression Functions 7196 Y. Li and V. Y. F. Tan Second-Order Asymptotics of Sequential Hypothesis Testing 7222 V. Nakos Nearly Optimal Sparse Polynomial Multiplication 7231 M. Ferreira Da Costa and Y. Chi On the Stable Resolution Limit of Total Variation Regularization for Spike Deconvolution 7237 A. Moshtaghpour, J. M. Bioucas-Dias, and L. Jacques Close Encounters of the Binary Kind: Signal Reconstruction Guarantees for 7253 Compressive Hadamard Sampling With Haar Wavelet Basis L. Ding and Y. Chen Leave-One-Out Approach for Matrix Completion: Primal and Dual Analysis 7274 Y. Li and V. Nakos Sublinear-Time Algorithms for Compressive Phase Retrieval 7302

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 DECEMBER 2020 VOLUME 66 NUMBER 12 IETTAW (ISSN 0018-9448) 19

Vol. 66(12): Dec. 2020. CODING THEORY AND CODING TECHNIQUES E. Abbe and M. Ye Reed-Muller Codes Polarize 7311 G. Zhang and H. Liu Constructions of Optimal Codes With Hierarchical Locality 7333 D. Koshelev Non-Split Toric BCH Codes on Singular del Pezzo Surfaces 7341 P. J. Almeida and J. Lieb Complete j-MDP Convolutional Codes 7348 R. Polyanskaya, N. Polyanskii, and I. Vorobyev Binary Batch Codes With Improved Redundancy 7360 X. Fu, S. Yang, and Z. Xiao Decoding and Repair Schemes for Shift-XOR Regenerating Codes 7371 L. P. Natarajan, P. Krishnan, V. Lalitha, and H. Dau Locally Decodable Index Codes 7387 N. Das and B. K. Rai Characteristic Sets of Fixed-Dimension Vector Linear Codes for Non-Multicast Networks 7408 Z. Jia and S. A. Jafar X-Secure T -Private Information Retrieval From MDS Coded Storage With 7427 Byzantine and Unresponsive Servers Z. Chen, M. Ye, and A. Barg Enabling Optimal Access and Error Correction for the Repair of Reed–Solomon Codes 7439 M. Ye New Constructions of Cooperative MSR Codes: Reducing Node Size to exp(O(n)) 7457 J. Hao, S.-T. Xia, K. W. Shum, B. Chen, F.-W. Fu, Bounds and Constructions of Locally Repairable Codes: Parity-Check Matrix Approach 7465 and Y. Yang N. Raviv, I. Tamo, R. Tandon, and A. G. Dimakis Gradient Coding From Cyclic MDS Codes and Expander Graphs 7475 M. Elyasi and S. Mohajer Cascade Codes for Distributed Storage Systems 7490

SHANNON THEORY N. Ardimanov, O. Shayevitz, and I. Tamo Minimum Guesswork With an Unreliable Oracle 7528 C. Tian On the Storage Cost of Private Information Retrieval 7539 P. Escamilla, M. Wigger, and A. Zaidi Distributed Hypothesis Testing: Cooperation and Concurrent Detection 7550 Y. Sakai and V. Y. F. Tan Variable-Length Source Dispersions Differ Under Maximum and Average Error Criteria 7565 R. Nomura Source Resolvability and Intrinsic Randomness: Two Random Number 7588 Generation Problems With Respect to a Subclass of f -Divergences A. Tandon, V. Y. F. Tan, and L. R. Varshney The Bee-Identiﬁcation Error Exponent With Absentee Bees 7602 COMMUNICATIONS, COMMUNICATION NETWORKS A. Mezghani, J. A. Nossek, and A. L. Swindlehurst Low SNR Asymptotic Rates of Vector Channels With One-Bit Outputs 7615 E. Lampiris and P. Elia Full Coded Caching Gains for Cache-Less Users 7635 T.-W. Kuo Minimum Age of Information TDMA Scheduling: Approximation Algorithms 7652 and Hardness Results H. Sun Private Information Delivery 7672 K.-H. Cho, S.-H. Lee, and V. Y. F. Tan Throughput Scaling of Covert Communication Over Wireless Adhoc Networks 7684

SEQUENCES C. Carlet Graph Indicators of Vectorial Functions and Bounds on the Algebraic Degree 7702 of Composite Functions Y. Jiang Weak Grain-Like Structures 7717 D. Gómez-Pérez and A. Winterhof A Note on the Cross-Correlation of Costas Permutations 7724 D. J. Katz, S. Lee, and S. A. Trunov Rudin-Shapiro-Like Sequences With Maximum Asymptotic Merit Factor 7728 C. Bright, I. Kotsireas, and V. Ganesh New Infinite Families of Perfect Quaternion Sequences and Williamson Sequences 7739 QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY F. Salek, M.-H. Hsieh, and J. Rodríguez Fonollosa Single-Serving Quantum Broadcast Channel With Common, Individualized, 7752 and Confidential Messages A. Anshu, M.-H. Hsieh, and R. Jain Noisy Quantum State Redistribution With Promise and the Alpha-Bit 7772 DETECTION, ESTIMATION P. Zhao and L. Lai Minimax Optimal Estimation of KL Divergence for Continuous Distributions 7787 A. Ghosh and S. Majumdar Ultrahigh-Dimensional Robust and Efficient Sparse Regression Using 7812 Non-Concave Penalized Density Power Divergence J. Liu, W. Zhou, A. Zaimbashi, and H. Li Persymmetric Adaptive Array Detection of Spread Spectrum Signals 7828

PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS J. Acharya, C. L. Canonne, and H. Tyagi Inference Under Information Constraints I: Lower Bounds From Chi-Square Contraction 7835 J. Acharya, C. L. Canonne, and H. Tyagi Inference Under Information Constraints II: Communication Constraints and 7856 Shared Randomness O. Ordentlich, Y. Polyanskiy, and O. Shayevitz A Note on the Probability of Rectangles for Correlated Binary Strings 7878 L. V. Truong and J. Scarlett Support Recovery in the Phase Retrieval Model: Information-Theoretic Fundamental Limit 7887 A. Coja-Oghlan, O. Gebhard, M. Hahn-Klimroth, Information-Theoretic and Algorithmic Thresholds for Group Testing 7911 and P. Loick LEARNING DecemberC. T. 2020 Li, X. Wu, A. Özgür, and A. E. Gamal Minimax Learning for Distributed Inference IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter7929 H. Saad and A. Nosratinia Recovering a Single Community With Side Information 7939

SIGNAL PROCESSING M. Huang and Z. Xu The Estimation Performance of Nonlinear Least Squares for Phase Retrieval 7967 M. Bakhshizadeh, A. Maleki, and S. Jalali Using Black-Box Compression Algorithms for Phase Retrieval 7978 R. Dudeja, J. Ma, and A. Maleki Information Theoretic Limits for Phase Retrieval With Subsampled Haar Sensing Matrices 8002 S. Chatterjee A Deterministic Theory of Low Rank Matrix Completion 8046

CORRECTIONS H. Wei, X. Liu, and S. C. Draper Corrections to “The ADMM Penalized Decoder for LDPC Codes” 8056 Z. Chance and D. J. Love Corrections to “Concatenated Coding for the AWGN Channel With Noisy Feedback” 8057 COMMUNICATIONS, COMMUNICATION NETWORKS A. Mezghani, J. A. Nossek, and A. L. Swindlehurst Low SNR Asymptotic Rates of Vector Channels With One-Bit Outputs 7615 E. Lampiris and P. Elia Full Coded Caching Gains for Cache-Less Users 7635 T.-W. Kuo Minimum Age of Information TDMA Scheduling: Approximation Algorithms 7652 and Hardness Results H. Sun Private Information Delivery 7672 K.-H. Cho, S.-H. Lee, and V. Y. F. Tan Throughput Scaling of Covert Communication Over Wireless Adhoc Networks 7684

PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS J. Acharya, C. L. Canonne, and H. Tyagi Inference Under Information Constraints I: Lower Bounds From Chi-Square Contraction 7835 J. Acharya, C. L. Canonne, and H. Tyagi Inference Under Information Constraints II: Communication Constraints and 7856 Shared Randomness O. Ordentlich, Y. Polyanskiy, and O. Shayevitz A Note on the Probability of Rectangles for Correlated Binary Strings 7878 20 L. V. Truong and J. Scarlett Support Recovery in the Phase Retrieval Model: Information-Theoretic Fundamental Limit 7887 A. Coja-Oghlan, O. Gebhard, M. Hahn-Klimroth, Information-Theoretic and Algorithmic Thresholds for Group Testing 7911 and P. Loick LEARNING C. T. Li, X. Wu, A. Özgür, and A. E. Gamal Minimax Learning for Distributed Inference 7929 H. Saad and A. Nosratinia Recovering a Single Community With Side Information 7939

Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC)

We are happy to announce the second edition of the recently created conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC). Information-theoretic cryptography studies security in the presence of computationally unbounded adversaries and covers a wide array of topics at the intersection of cryptography, coding theory, information-theory and theory of computation. Notable examples include randomness extraction and privacy amplification, secret sharing, secure multiparty computation and proof systems, private-information retrieval and locally decodable codes, authentication codes and non-malleable codes, differen- tial privacy, quantum information processing, and information-theoretic foundations of physical-layer security. See https:// itcrypto.github.io for more information.

ITC replaces the International Conference on Information Theoretic Security (ICITS), which was dedicated to the same topic and ran 2005-2017. ITC can be seen as a reboot of ICITS with a new name, a new steering committee and a renewed excitement.

The conference will have two tracks: a conference track and a spotlight track.

The conference track will operate like a traditional conference with the usual review process and published proceedings. The spotlight track consists of invited talks (not included in the proceedings) that highlight the most exciting recent advances in the area. We solicit nominations for spotlight talks from the community. (See the Call for Papers.)

The second ITC conference will take place in Bertinoro, Italy on July 23–26, 2021. (We may turn the conference into an online-only event depending on the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we will allow online participation even if the conference will take place in person.) The submission deadline for ITC 2021 is Feb 1, 2021 and the call for papers (including a nomination procedure for the greatest hits track) is available here: https://itcrypto.github.io/2021/.

Please submit your best work to ITC 2021! We hope to see many of you there!

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 PNG

Call for Papers

General Co-Chairs Fair dinkum, ISIT returns to Australia. In 2021, the IEEE International Symposium on Parastoo Sadeghi Information Theory (ISIT) is currently scheduled to run at the Melbourne Convention and Emanuele Viterbo Exhibition Centre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from July 11–16, 2021. ISIT was last held in Australia in 2005, in Adelaide. TPC Co-Chairs Interested authors are encouraged to submit previously unpublished contributions from a Michael Gastpar broad range of topics related to information theory, including but not limited to the Stephen Hanly following areas: Henry Pfister Emina Soljanin • Communication and Storage Coding • Information Theory in CS • Coding Theory • Information Theory in Data Science Publications • Coded and Distributed Computing • Learning Theory Bikash Dey • Combinatorics and Information Theory • Network Coding and Applications • Communication Theory • Network Data Analysis Finance • Compressed Sensing and Sparsity • Network Information Theory Sarah Johnson • Cryptography and Security • Pattern Recognition and ML Detection and Estimation Privacy in Information Processing Local Arrangements • • • Deep Learning for Networks • Quantum Information Theory Margreta Kuijper Distributed Storage Shannon Theory James Saunderson • • • Emerging Applications of IT • Signal Processing Publicity • Information Theory and Statistics • Source Coding and Data Compression Information Theory in Biology Wireless Communication Brian M. Kurkoski • • Submitted and published manuscripts should not exceed 5 pages in length plus an optional Tutorials extra page containing references only. Submitted manuscripts should be of sufficient detail Yi Hong to be evaluated by expert reviewers in the field. Full information about paper submission will be posted on the conference website. Recent Results Neda Aboutorab http://isit2021.org/

Student Travel Grants Paper submission deadline: January 10, 2021 Lawrence Ong Notiﬁcation of acceptance: March 26, 2021 Sponsorship In case of a fully online or hybrid event, adjustments will be made to deliver a cutting-edge Girish Nair scholarly and networking experience to all participants regardless of their mode of participation. For the most recent information, visit the website and follow us on Twitter Social Media @ieee_itsoc, Facebook and LinkedIn. Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam The organizing committee looks forward to your scholarly contributions and participation Jingge Zhu in ISIT 2021.

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 22

11th International Symposium on Topics in Coding Montr´eal, Qu´ebec, Canada, August 30th – September 3rd, 2021

nternat I io h n Call for Papers t 1 a l 1 The 11th International Symposium on Topics in Coding* will be held

y from Monday August 30th to Friday September 3rd, 2021, in Montréal, T m Québec, Canada. The symposium will be an opportunity to acquire a o p p os o n g broad overview of the current status of advanced research in all areas ic iu m in s in Cod of coding theory and its applications. All original contributions will be General Co-Chairs considered, in both theoretical and applied fields. Topics for submission Catherine Douillard, IMT Atlantique, France Fran¸cois Gagnon, include, but are not limited to, the following: Ecole´ de technologie supérieure, Canada Error-control coding Turbo, LDPC, polar, and product-like codes Vice Co-Chairs Georges Kaddoum, Bit-interleaved coded modulation Ecole´ de technologie supérieure, Canada High-throughput decoding Fran¸cois Leduc-Primeau, Hardware and software implementations Ecole´ Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada Performance bounds Technical Program Committee Chair Iterative equalization and detection Frank R. Kschischang, Message-passing algorithms University of Toronto, Canada Joint source-channel coding Technical Program Committee Vice-Chairs FEC for optical communications Amer Baghdadi, IMT Atlantique, France Alexandre Graell i Amat, Coding for wireless communications Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Coding for storage Coding for distributed computation Finance Chair and Webmaster Pascal Giard, In addition, papers that broaden the reach of coding, including emerging Ecole´ de technologie supérieure, Canada fields and novel applications of coding, are encouraged. The symposium will include regular papers for oral and poster sessions as well as invited Conference Management Co-Chairs papers. Accepted and presented papers/posters will appear in the sym- Elsa Dupraz, IMT Atlantique, France Fabrice Labeau, McGill University, Canada posium proceedings and in IEEEXplore.

Publication Chair Submissions Vincent Gripon, IMT Atlantique, France Authors are invited to submit a full manuscript (not exceed- Local Arrangements Co-Chairs ing 5 pages in double-column format) via the symposium website: Christian Cardinal, http://www.istc2021.org Ecole´ Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada Ghyslain Gagnon, Ecole´ de technologie supérieure, Canada Important Dates Sponsorship and Publicity Chair Papersubmissiondeadline:...... April 25th, 2021 Warren J. Gross, McGill University, Canada Notificationofacceptance:...... July 5th, 2021 Camera-readypaperdue:...... August 1st, 2021 For further information regarding paper submission, registration, accom- modation, and travel, please consult the symposium website.

Co-sponsored by the * Formerly the International Symposium on Turbo Codes & Iterative Information Pro- IEEE Information Theory Society cessing.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020 23

ITWKanazawa,2021 Japan Oct. 17-21, 2021

Symposium Committee ITW2021 October 17–21, 2021 in Kanazawa, Japan General Co-Chairs Brian M. Kurkoski JAIST The 2021 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW2021) will be held October 17-21 at Kanazawa Tadashi Wadayama Nagoya Inst. of Tech. Bunka Hall, Kanazawa, Japan. Kanazawa is located in the middle of Honshu, the main island of Shun Watanabe Tokyo Univ. of A&T Japan, and can conveniently be reached by train or airplane from Tokyo. Bordered by the Sea of Japan and the Japanese Alps, Kanazawa was also recognized as the world’s first UNESCO Finance Creative City in the field of crafts and folk art. As a traditional city, Kanazawa hosts many historical Shigeaki Kuzuoka Wakayama Univ. places such as the Kenrokuen Garden, one of the “Three Great Gardens of Japan”; the Myoruji “Nijna Temple” with its many secret passages and hidden doors; and the Higashi Tea House District Local Arrangement surrounded by historical shops and homes. The Kanazawa Bunka Hall venue is centrally located in Hiroshi Fujisaki Kanazawa University Kanazawa. While admiring the traditional architecture, attendees will be able to enjoy the delicate gold leaf arts and lacquerware, as well as the delicious seafood. Publicity Elsa Dupraz IMT Atlantique Call for Papers Takayuki Nozaki Yamaguchi Univ. Interested authors are invited to submit papers describing novel and previously unpublished results Publications on all areas on coding and information theory, including but not limited to the focus topics below: Kazushi Mimura Hiroshima City Univ. ‣ Low-Latency Communications • Low-latency communications in multi-user information theory Registration • Low-latency communications for wireless applications Akiko Manada Shonan Inst. of Tech. • Application of low-latency communications techniques ‣ Information-Theoretic Security Technical Program • Physical layer security Committee • Secure computation under information-theoretic security • Information-theoretic security for privacy TPC Co-Chairs ‣Machine Learning for Communications Jakob Hoydis Nokia Bell Lab. • Neural networks for communication systems Mitsugu Iwamoto The Univ. of Electro-Comm. • Machine learning-based transceiver algorithms Krishna Narayanan Texas A&M Univ. • Information-theoretical understanding of deep learning Vincent Y.F. Tan National Univ. of Singapore ‣Codes in the Cloud Secretary • Coded computation Hideki Yagi The Univ. of Electro-Comm. • Private information retrieval • Distributed storage IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Submission Authors should submit papers according to the guidelines which will later appear at: http://itw2021.org Accepted papers will appear in the symposium proceedings. To be published in IEEE Xplore, an author of an accepted paper must register and present the paper. IEEE does not guarantee inclusion in IEEE Xplore. Paper submission deadline April 2021 Acceptance notification July 2021

Further information will be posted on the symposium web site as it becomes available.

Photo: Max Pixel

December 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 24

Conference Calendar

DATE CONFERENCE LOCATION WEB PAGE DUE DATE December 08–11, IEEE Global Communications 8–10 December 2020: https://globecom2020.ieee- Passed 2020 (GLOBECOM) In-person (Taipei, globecom.org Taiwan) 7–11 December 2020: Virtual January 10–13, ACM-SIAM Symposium on Virtual Conference https://www.siam.org/ Passed 2021 Discrete Algorithms (SODA21) conferences/cm/conference/ soda21 February 7–12, The Information Theory and its San Diego, California https://ita.ucsd.edu/ — 2021 Applications Workshop (ITA) workshop/#location March 24–26, 55th Annual Conference on Virtual https://ciss.jhu.edu/ December 14, 2021 Information Sciences and 2020 Systems (CISS) March 29– IEEE Wireless Communications Nanjing, China https://wcnc2021.ieee-wcnc.org Passed April 1, 2021 and Networking Conference April 11–15, IEEE Information Theory Riva Del Garda, Italy http://itw2020.it/welcome.html Passed 2021 Workshop (ITW) 2020 May 10, 2021 The 4th Age of Information Virtual https://infocom2021.ieee-infocom Passed Workshop (AoI’21) .org/age-information-workshop June 21–25, 2021 51st Annual ACM Symposium on Rome, Italy http://acm-stoc.org/stoc2021/ Passed the Theory of Computing (STOC) visa.html June 28–30, 2021 North American School of Vancouver, Canada https://www.itsoc.org/ — Information Theory (NASIT) conferences/schools/nasit2019 July 11–16, 2021 IEEE International Symposium Melbourne, Australia https://2021.ieee-isit.org January 10, on Information Theory 2021 Major COMSOC conferences: http://www.comsoc.org/confs/index.html

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2020