IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter Vol. 52, No. 4, December 2002 Editor: Lance C. Pérez ISSN 1059-2362 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory Palais de Beaulieu, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1-5 July 2002. By Daniela Tuninetti This year, the 2002 Symposium of our so- were organized on Tuesday evening. As ciety was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, the tradition of the symposium has it, on the shores of the beautiful Lake every day’s sessions were preceded by a Geneva at the foot of the Alps in the plenary talk: Palais de Beaulieu during the first week • on Monday, on “Quantum Mechan- of July. ics, Chaos, and the Primes” by Sir There were 730 participants, 234 of Michael V. Berry, professor at Bristol which were students, and about 500 University (UK); technical papers were presented. Every • justified request for financial support on Tuesday, on “Saving Bandwidth could be granted, totaling roughly in the Wideband Regime” by Prof. $110,000. Most of the financial support Sergio Verdu from Princeton Uni- went to students presenting papers. For versity (USA); the first time in ISIT history, high-speed • IT Society President Tom Fuja on Wednesday, on “Advances in wireless LAN access was provided to the addresses the conference. Convex Optimization: Theory, Al- participants. Furthermore, the organiz- gorithms, and Applications” by ers developed user-friendly and Prof. Stephen P. Boyd from Stanford open-source software for on-line regis- University (USA); tration, paper submission, and paper review. Another • `first’ for ISIT was the on-line availability of the and on Friday, Prof. Shafi Goldwasser from MIT one-page abstracts. (USA) talked about “The Marriage of Cryptography and Complexity Theory”. A traditional welcome cocktail on Sunday evening opened the symposium at the Palais de Beaulieu. The This year’s Awards of the Information Theory Society technical program started on Monday morning. For five were presented on Tuesday during a lunch ceremony. days, except on Wednesday afternoon, seven parallel The president of the IT society, Prof. Thomas E. Fuja, an- tracks were scheduled with two morning sessions and nounced the newly-elected IEEE Fellows from our Soci- two afternoon sessions, each consisting of four 20 min- ety: Prof. Oliver Collins, Prof. Evangelos S. Eleftheriou, Prof. Paddy Farrel, Prof. Vijay Kumar and Prof. Shojiro utes talks. Talks covered the whole spectrum of commu- Sakata. nications from Coding Theory, Source Compression, Iterative Decoding, Network Information Theory to Sig- continued on page 3 nal Processing, Multi-user Detection, Estimation and Cryptography. Two parallel sessions on recent results 2 From the Editor Lance C. Pérez This issue of the IEEE Information The- Electronic submission, especially in ascii and Word ory Society Newsletter contains several formats, is encouraged. interesting workshop reports includ- I may be reached at the following address: ing the 2002 International Symposium on Information Theory which took Lance C. Pérez place in Lausanne, Switzerland. Department of Electrical Engineering 209N Walter Scott Engineering Center I am pleased to announce the digital University of Nebraska-Lincoln newsletter project is nearing comple- Lincoln, NE 68588-0511 Lance C. Pérez tion and members will soon be able to Phone: (402)472-6258 access the Society’s newsletter collec- Fax: (402)472-4732 tion from the same site that hosts the Email: [email protected] Transactions. The March 2003 News- letter will have all the details. Sincerely, Please help make the Newsletter as in- Lance C. Pérez teresting and informative as possible by offering suggestions and contribut- ing news. The deadlines for the 2003 is- In the September 2002 issue of the Information Theory Newsletter the article sues of the newsletter are as follows: announcing the new ComSoc/ITSoc Joint paper award on page 4 contained two errors. Issue Deadline The first author of the paper ``Iterative (Turbo) Soft Interference Cancellation March 2003 January 15, 2003 and Decoding for Coded CDMA’’ should be Xiaodong Wei instead of Xiaodong June 2003 April 15, 2003 Wang. Also, the paper appeared in the IEEE Transactionson Communications. September 2003 July 15, 2003 December 2003 October 15, 2003 IEEE Table of Contents 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory . cover page Information Theory From the Editor . 2 Society Newsletter Historian’s Column . 5 Call for Nominations . 6 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter Coming in 2003: The IEEE Member Digital Library . 6 (USPS 360-350) is published quarterly by the 60th Birthday Celebration for Daniel J. Costello . 7 Information Theory Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Workshop Report: 2002 Information Theory Workshop . 7 Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, Workshop Report: Two Successful 2002 events organized by the IEEE New York, NY 10016-5997. German IT Chapter . 9 Cost is $1.00 per member per year (included in Society fee) for each member of the Infor- Golomb’s Puzzle Column™: Early Bird Numbers . 10 mation Theory Society. Printed in the U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY IEEE Information Theory Society Annual Meeting . 10 and at additional mailing offices. New Books . 14 Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEE In- formation Theory Society Newsletter, IEEE, Golomb’s Puzzle Column™: On a Problem of Richard Epstein - Solutions . 16 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Call For Papers . 18 © 2002 IEEE. Information contained in this newsletter may be copied without permis- Dimacs. 19 sion provided that the copies are not made 2nd Call for Papers for WiOpt’03 . .20 or distributed for direct commercial advan- tage, and the title of the publication and its Call for Papers . 21 date appear. Conference Calendar . 23 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2002 3 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory Continued from page 1 IEEE President Raymond D. Findlay presents the Leon Symposium Co-Chairs Bixio Rimoldi and James L. Massey with Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award to Muriel Medard. Rudiger Urbanke. Prof. Paul Siegel, editor in chief for IEEE Transactions on In- Prof. David Tse and Prof. Stephen Hanly were presented the formation Theory, then handed out the appreciation certifi- 2000 Joint Communication Society/Information Theory So- cates for the outgoing associate editors Prof. Patrick Sole, ciety Paper Award, Prof. Emre Telatar was given the 2001 In- Prof. Neal Koblitz, Prof. Gabor Lugosi, Prof. Marcelo formation Society Paper Award and Prof. Toby Berger the Weinberger, Prof. Peter Shor, Prof. Andrew Klapper and 2002 Shannon Award. Prof. Jonathon Ashley and for the outgoing publications edi- The IEEE President, Dr. Raymond D. Findlay, presented the tor Prof. Erik Agrell. IEEE Graduate Teaching Award to Prof. Vijay Bhargava and Prof. Thomas E. Fuja then gave Prof. Bixio Rimoldi and Prof. the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award to Prof. James Massey a certificate of appreciation for serving as Muriel Medard. co-chairs of ISIT ‘02. The two co-chairs thanked everyone in- volved in the organization of the symposium for their efforts and enthusiasm. IEEE President Raymond D. Findlay presents the IEEE Gradu- IT Society President Tom Fuja presents the 2002 Shannon ate Teaching Award to Vijay Bhargava. Award to Professor Toby Berger of Cornell University. December 2002 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter 4 banquet. Instead, there were five “islands of food” corre- sponding to the five continents. The banquet format pro- vided a lot of opportunities for interaction. After dinner, the recipient of the 2003 Shannon Award was announced: Prof. Lloyd R. Welch. Prof. Welch will give his Shannon Lecture at the 2003 ISIT in Yo- kohama. Nusha Wyner, wife of the late Aaron Wyner, received a bronze plaque commemorating the June 2002 special issue of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory dedicated to her husband. At the conclusion of the banquet, Prof. Hideki Imai welcomed everyone to participate in the next ISIT that will be held in Yokohama, Japan, in summer 2003. The symposium came to an end on Friday afternoon. Several of the attendants expressed their compliments to the orga- nizers for a successful, enjoyable and well organized conference. Photos are available at the conference web site http://isit02.epfl.ch/. Any participant who has photos to share may send them to [email protected] to be posted on the conference web site. Attendees of the 2002 ISIT enjoy the historical village of Gruyere with the mountain le Moleson in the background. This year’s best paper award has been shared by M.G. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, M.A. Shokrollahi and D.A. Spielman and by T.J. Richardson and R.L. Urbanke. On Wednesday afternoon, no technical session was held. Instead, a wide range of excursions in the surroundings of Lausanne had been organized, namely a visit to the histori- cal town of Gruyere with its medieval village, a visit to the 12th century castle of Chillon, a trip to Gstaad on the GoldenPass Panoramic Train, and hiking in the mountains at Les Diablerets and an ascension to Rochers-de-Naye. This year’s Shannon Lecture was given by Prof. Toby Berger from Cornell University (USA) on Thursday morn- ing, entitled `Living Information Theory’. He introduced the audience to the way neurons communicate and to the studies undertaken in the quest to understand the way na- ture ensures efficient communication. He ended his pre- sentation on the tones of his harmonica. The cocktail banquet dinner was held on the premises of the Olympic Museum. It was not a traditional sit-down Symposium attendees at one of the ``islands of food’’ at the 2002 banquet. IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter December 2002 5 Historian’s Column A. Ephremides First the good news: most of the people who have worked in New York that followed the memorable Moscow and/or are working on Information Theory are alive and workshop during that decade.