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Panelist Bios
Marco Dalai
Biography: Marco Dalai received his degree (Laurea) in Electronic Engineering and his PhD in Information Engineering respectively in 2003 and 2007 from the University of Brescia, Italy, where he is now an associate professor in the Department of Information Engineering. His current research interests are mostly in information theory (Shannon theory, source coding, channel theory, inference) and on related mathematical problems in combinatorics and probability. He was the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award and was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (ITSoc) for the years 2018-2019. He has been serving as the chair of the IEEE Italy Section ITSoc Chapter in the years 2017-2020, general co-chair of ITW 2020, Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory since March 2020, and member of the Board of Governors of the ITSoc since January 2022 (Thomas Cover Dissertation Award for the term 2023-2025, Conference Committee for 2024-2026).
Samir M. Perlaza
Biography: Samir M. Perlaza is a permanent member of the scientific staff at INRIA, the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics; a visiting research collaborator in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University; and an associate researcher in the Mathematics Laboratory GAATI at the University of French Polynesia. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (Telecom ParisTech) in 2008 and 2011, respectively. From 2008 to 2011, he was also a research engineer at France Télécom - Orange Labs (Paris, France). He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Alcatel-Lucent Chair in Flexible Radio at Supélec in 2011 and at Princeton University in 2012 - 2013. Dr. Perlaza's research interests are in the areas of information theory, game theory, data sciences, and their applications in wireless networks, power systems, and artificial intelligence. Among his publications in these areas is the recent book ‘‘Advanced Data Analytics for Power Systems’’ (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Dr. Perlaza has served as an Editor of the IEEE Transactions in Communications and the IET Smart Grid Journal. Recognition of his work includes the Alban Fellowship and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship, both from the European Commission.
Huazi (Tom) Zhang
Biography: Huazi Zhang (Senior Member, IEEE) received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Institute of Information and Communication Engineering in 2008 and 2013, respectively, from Zhejiang University. From 2011 to 2013, he was a visiting researcher with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. From 2013 to 2014, he was a Research Fellow with the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. From 2014 to 2015, he was a Research Scholar with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
He has over a hundred journal, conference publications and patent applications in the areas of coding techniques, wireless communications and signal processing. He has served on the Technical Program Committee of communications theory, wireless communications and signal processing symposia for IEEE Globecom and ICC since 2013. He was an Exemplary Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Communications in the year of 2014.
He joined Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd in 2015. Since then, he has engaged in research projects on advanced wireless communications involving channel coding and signal processing techniques, and engaged in multiple standardization activities. His contribution led to the adoption of many state-of-the-art research results into 5G standards, as well as the subsequent commercial rollout. His current research interests are channel coding, information theory and signal processing for wireless communications, with focus on theoretical analysis, algorithm design and hardware implementations for 5G and beyond.
Cheuk Ting Li
Biography: Cheuk Ting Li received the B.Sc. degree in mathematics and B.Eng. degree in information engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, in 2012, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 2014 and 2018, respectively. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. He joined the Department of Information Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in January 2020. His research interests include simulation of random sources and channels, one-shot and finite-blocklength schemes in information theory, network information theory, and automated theorem proving. He was awarded the 2016 IEEE Jack Keil Wolf ISIT Student Paper Award, and the 2023 Information Theory Society Paper Award.
Pascal Vontobel
Biography: Pascal O. Vontobel received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering in 1997, the Post-Diploma degree in information techniques in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 2003, all from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
From 1997 to 2002 he was a research and teaching assistant at the Signal and Information Processing Laboratory at ETH Zurich, from 2006 to 2013 he was a research scientist with the Information Theory Research Group at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, USA, and since 2014 he has been with the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where, since 2023, he has been a (full) professor, department chairman, and graduate division head. Besides this, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-2004), a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004-2005), a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006), and a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2014). His research interests lie in coding and information theory, quantum information processing, data science, communications, and signal processing.
Dr. Vontobel was an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2009-2012), an Awards Committee Member of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2013-2014), a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2014-2015), an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications (2014-2017), and currently is a Thomas Cover Dissertation Awards Committee Member of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2023-2025). Moreover, he was a TPC co-chair of the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, the 2018 IEICE International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications, and the 2018 IEEE Information Theory Workshop, along with being the director of the 2021 and 2023 Croucher Summer Course in Information Theory, co-organizing several topical workshops, and being on the technical program committees of many international conferences. Furthermore, he was multiple times a plenary speaker at international information and coding theory conferences, he received an exemplary reviewer award from the IEEE Communications Society, and was awarded the ETH medal for his Ph.D. dissertation. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Uzi Pereg
Biography: Uzi Pereg is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Helen Diller Quantum Center at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Technion in 2019.
From 2020 to 2022, he was a postdoctoral senior researcher at the Institute for Communications Engineering of the Technical University of Munich and the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST). During this period, he participated in the theory group of the German federal government (BMBF) project for the design and analysis of quantum communication and repeater systems. He joined the Technion as an Assistant Professor in 2022.
Prof. Pereg is a recipient of the Pearl award for outstanding research work in the field of communications, KLA-Tencor Award for Excellent Conference Paper, Viterbi Postdoc Fellowship, Israel CHE Fellowship for Quantum Science and Technology, MCQST Seed Funding Grant for Exceptional Junior Researchers, Israel VATAT Junior Faculty Program for Quantum Science and Technology, and the Chaya Career Advancement Chair.
Michael Lentmaier
Biography: Michael Lentmaier is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden, where he serves as the director of the Master’s Program in Wireless Communications. He received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from Ulm University, Germany, in 1998 and his Ph.D. degree in Telecommunication Theory from Lund University in 2003. In 2003 and 2004 he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and Ulm University. From 2005 to 2007 he was with the Institute of Communications and Navigation of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, where he worked on signal-processing techniques in satellite navigation receivers. From 2008 to 2012 he was a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems at TU Dresden, Germany, where he was leading the Algorithms and Coding research group. He is a senior member of the IEEE, chair of the IEEE Sweden VT/COM/IT Joint Chapter and served as an editor for IEEE Communications Letters (2010-2013), IEEE Transactions on Communications (2014-2017), and IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2017-2020).
His main research interests are in information theory, with a focus on modern coding theory, graph-based iterative algorithms, and the impact of spatial coupling on their performance. Applications include reliable communication, localization, security/privacy, and group testing. He received the best presentation award for his paper titled “Dynamic Multipath Estimation by Sequential Monte Carlo Methods” at ION GNSS (2007), the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters Exemplary Reviewer Award (2012), and the IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award (2012) for his paper “Iterative Decoding Threshold Analysis for LDPC Convolutional Codes”.
Alejandro Cohen
Biography: Alejandro Cohen is an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty in Technion. He was a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 2019 and 2021. He worked as a part of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in the Network Coding and Reliable Communications group of Professor Muriel Médard. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Systems Engineering from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in 2018, under the supervision of Professor Omer Gurewitz and Professor Asaf Cohen. From 2014 to 2019, he worked as a research scientist at Intel.
Navin Kashyap
Biography: Navin Kashyap received a B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, an M.S. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After a two-year postdoctoral stint at the University of California, San Diego, he joined the faculty of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he remained till December 2010. Thereafter, he has been with the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, where he is currently a Professor. His research interests lie primarily in the application of combinatorial and probabilistic methods in information and coding theory.
Prof. Kashyap served on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory during the period 2009-2014. He was appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer of the Society during 2017-2018. He was a General Co-Chair for the 2022 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW 2022), held in Mumbai, India, and a Technical Program Committee Co-Chair for ITW 2023, held in Saint-Malo, France. Besides these, he has been actively involved in organizing several workshops, conferences, and schools in India, in the areas of information theory, communications, and signal processing.
He is a recipient of the Swarnajayanti Fellowship awarded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He is at present an Associate Editor for the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, and the Springer journal Cryptography and Communications: Discrete Structures, Boolean Functions and Sequences.
Matthieu R. Bloch
Biography: Matthieu R. Bloch is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received the Engineering degree from Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2003, the Ph.D. degree in Engineering Science from the Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. In 2008-2009, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. Since July 2009, Dr. Bloch has been on the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and from 2009 to 2013 Dr. Bloch was based at Georgia Tech Lorraine. His research interests are in the areas of information theory, error-control coding, wireless communications, and cryptography. Dr. Bloch has served on the organizing committee of several international conferences; he was the chair of the Online Committee of the IEEE Information Theory Society from 2011 to 2014, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2016 to 2019 and again since 2021, and he has been on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society since 2016 and currently serves as the Junior Past President. He was an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security from 2019 to 2023. He is the co-recipient of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Information Theory Society 2011 Joint Paper Award and the co-author of the textbook Physical-Layer Security: From Information Theory to Security Engineering published by Cambridge University Press.
Martina Cardone
Biography: Martina Cardone (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in electronics and communications from Télécom ParisTech (with work done at Eurecom in Sophia Antipolis, France) in 2015. She is currently a McKnight Land-Grant Assistant Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Minnesota (UMN). From July 2015 to August 2017, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, UCLA Henry Samueli School. Her main research interests are in estimation theory, network information theory, network coding, and wireless networks with a special focus on their capacity, security, and privacy aspects. She is a recipient of the 2022 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, the NSF CAREER Award in 2021, the NSF CRII Award in 2019, the Second Prize in the Outstanding Ph.D. Award, Télécom ParisTech, Paris, France, and the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship in 2014.
Tara Javidi
Biography: Tara Javidi received her BS in electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. She received her MS degrees in electrical engineering (systems) and in applied mathematics (stochastic analysis) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Tara Javidi was an assistant professor at the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle. In 2005, she joined the University of California, San Diego, where she is currently a Jacobs Family Scholar, Halicioglu Data Science Fellow, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2012-2013, she spent her sabbatical at Stanford University as a visiting faculty.
Tara Javidi’s research interests are in theory of active learning, information acquisition and statistical inference, information theory with feedback, stochastic control theory, and wireless communications and communication networks.
Tara Javidi is currently the Editor in Chief of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (2022/23/24). She is also serving on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2017/18/19-2020/21/22). She perviously served on the (guest) and associated editorial board of the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking, the IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, and IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Tara Javidi is a Fellow of IEEE. She and her former PhD students are recipients of the 2021 IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award. Prof. Javidi was awarded University of Michigan ECE’s 2021 Distinguished Educator Award for her excellence in information and system theory education. She also received a 2020 HDSI Fellowship. Tara Javidi was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2017/18) as well as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (2019/2020). She also received the 2018 and 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Award for her contributions to wireless technology. Tara Javidi was a recipient of the National Science Foundation early career award (CAREER) in 2004, Barbour Graduate Scholarship, University of Michigan, in 1999, and the Presidential and Ministerial Recognitions for Excellence in the National Entrance Exam, Iran, in 1992. In addition to numerous contributed and invited talks, she was a tutorial speaker at various international and prestigious conferences: International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks (CROWNCOM) 2010, ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (Mobihoc) 2013, International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) 2014, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2016, and International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2019).
At the University of California, San Diego, Tara Javidi is a a co-PI at The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale (TILOS), a founding co-director of the Center for Machine-Integrated Computing and Security, the principal investigator of DetecDrone Project . She is a faculty member of the Centers of Information Theory and Applications (ITA), Wireless Communications (CWC), Contextual Robotics Institute (CRI) and Networked Systems (CNS). She is also a founding faculty member of Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI) and an affiliate faculty member in the departments of Computer Science and Engineering as well as Ethnic Studies. She is currently the Chair of UCSD Division of Academic Senate (2021/22) where she previously served as the Vice Chair (2020/21). She received the 2021 University of California Academic Council Chairs Award for Mid-Career Leadership which honors a UC faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding and creative contributions that impact faculty governance as well as exceptional promise in serving the Academic Senate and working across the university’s many and diverse stakeholders.
Tara Javidi is also passionate about inclusion and diversity at the institutions of higher education as well as in engineering profession. Since joining UCSD in 2005 till 2018, she was the faculty advisor for SWE@UCSD (UC San Diego Chapter of Society of Women Engineers). In 2010, she worked with UCSD student chapters of NSBE UCSD (UC San Diego Chapter of National Society of Black Engineers) and SHPE UCSD (UCSD Student Chapter of Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) to help Jacobs School of engineering establish IDEA Engineering Student Center with the mission to foster an inclusive and diverse community, increase retention and graduation rates, and promote a sustainable culture of academic excellence among URM engineering students at UC San Diego. From 2010 till 2014, she served on the Jacobs School of Engineering Dean's Diversity Advisory Council. In 2013/14, she chaired the UCSD Faculty Senate Committee on Equity and Diversity. She was also the UCSD faculty representative at the UC System-wide University Committee on Affirmative Action & Diversity (UCAAD). In 2015, Tara Javidi was awarded a UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award in recognition of her mentorship of the underrepresented minority students and postdoc scholars (see this video about the award). She has also been very active within IEEE Information Theory Society as a Diversity and Inclusion Committee member (Feb 11, 2018 - Dec 31, 2019), Student and Outreach Subcommittee member (Jan 1, 2015 - Dec 31, 2016), and Women in the Information Theory Society (WITHITS) officer (Jan 1, 2013 - Dec 31, 2014).
Anand Sarwate
Biography: Anand D. Sarwate is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ, USA). His research interests include information theory, machine learning, signal processing, optimization, and privacy and security. Dr. Sarwate is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society for 2024--2025. He received the Rutgers Board of Governors Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence in 2020 and the NSF CAREER award in 2015.
I-Hsiang Wang
Biography: I-Hsiang Wang received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 2006. He received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California at Berkeley, USA, in 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 2013, he has been at the Department of Electrical Engineering in National Taiwan University, where he is now a full professor. His research interests include network information theory and networked data analysis. He was a finalist of the Best Student Paper Award of IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, 2011. He received the 2017 IEEE Information Theory Society Taipei Chapter and IEEE Communications Society Taipei/Tainan Chapters Best Paper Award for Young Scholars. He won the National Taiwan University Distinguished Teaching Award (top 1% of the university teaching staff, awarded for 5 years) in 2017, the NTU EECS Academic Contribution Award in 2021, and the NSTC Project for Excellent Junior Research Investigators from 2021 to 2024. He co-organized the 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory and the 2018 IEEE East Asian School of Information Theory and Communications. He currently serves as the Chapter Liaison in the membership committee of the IEEE Information Theory Society.
Brian Kurkoski
Biography: Brian Kurkoski is a professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) in Nomi, Japan. Born in Portland, Oregon, USA, he received the B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1993, and then worked at two California startups. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California San Diego in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He received a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2004 to 2006, while at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan, where he continued as associate professor from 2007 to 2012. He has been at JAIST since 2012. He was an associate editor for IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences from 2010 to 2014. He was chair of the Data Storage Technical Committee, a technical committee of the IEEE Communications Society for 2017-2018, and was secretary for 2013-2016. For the IEEE Information Theory Society, he is a member of the Board of Governors for two terms, 2021-2023 and 2024-2026, and was the chair of the Digital Presence/Online Committee for 2019 to 2023. He was a general co-chair of the 2021 IEEE Information Theory Workshop.
Mary Wootters
Biography: Mary Wootters is an associate professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2014 and a BA in math and computer science from Swarthmore College in 2008, and she was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University from 2014 to 2016. She works in information theory, theoretical computer science, and applied math; her research interests include error correcting codes and randomized algorithms for dealing with high dimensional data. Her Ph.D. thesis received the Sumner B. Myers Memorial Prize from the UMich Math Department and the EATCS Distinguished Dissertation award; she is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, was named a Sloan Research Fellow in 2019 and a Google Research Scholar in 2021; she was awarded the IEEE Information Theory Society James L. Massey award in 2022, and named the IEEE Information Theory Society Goldsmith Lecturer for 2024.
Emanuele Viterbo
Biography:
Tolga Duman
Biography: Tolga M. Duman is a professor in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department professor at Bilkent University in Turkey. He received a B.S. degree from the same university in 1993, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He has also been serving as the department chair since September 2019. Before joining Bilkent University in September 2012, he was a full professor with the School of ECEE at Arizona State University. Dr. Duman’s current research interests are in systems, with a particular focus on communications and signal processing, including wireless and mobile communications, channel coding/modulation, coding for wireless communications, information theory and data storage systems, as well as machine learning for communications and semantic communications/signal processing.
Dr. Duman is a Fellow of IEEE, a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the IEEE Third Millennium medal, and a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. He served on the editorial board of various journals, including IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Physical Communications (2016-2019) and IEEE Transactions on Communications (2020-2023).