Future Directions in Information Theory:

A Vision and Recommendations

Jeff Andrews, UT AustinAlex Dimakis, UT Austin

Lara Dolecek, UCLAMichelle Effros, CaltechOlgica Milenkovic, UIUC

Muriel Medard, MITAndrea Montanari, Stanford

Sriram Vishwanath, UT AustinEdmund Yeh, Northeastern

ITA BOG Meeting, Jan. 2014

Background

• IEEE has asked its societies to come up with a document detailing “Future Directions” (technical directions)• This will make its way into a high-level IEEE level report• Gerhard asked me to lead this effort in Spring 2014

• More importantly, seemed a great opportunity to:• Take stock of recent developments/trends in information theory• Consider where things likely to go in next 10-20 years• Articulate a compelling rationale for increased funding and hiring of

information theory researchers• Consider actions the ITSoc BOG could take to amplify the long-term

vibrancy of our area and to meet future needs

• I formed the committee, aiming for diversity of research areas, blend of young and established scholars, “out of the box” thinkers• ISIT BOG action item: consult and include “outside experts”

The Report

• We developed a concise 14 page report that is on the BOG website

• Philosophy:• Most growth and funding opportunities will be in areas of intersection

with other disciplines; articulate those• Exciting things happening in other fields that are enabled by or

closely related to information theory; raise awareness of those• Keep it simple and short, avoid buzzwords, stick to fundamentals

• This was a pretty daunting task • We have gone through 20 rounds of revision in last 9 months• Could use further improvement, and always will• We therefore ask the BOG for a motion and vote to approve the

report, with suggested revisions

Outline of Report1. Communications (JA)

a. Fine block length coding and capacityb. Massive MIMOc. Iterative R&D with industry

2. Networking (JA, ME, LD)a. Fundamental properties of large (general)

networks and graphs, inc. network coding and multiuser IT

b. Nano-circuit design and distributed data storage

3. Control theory (SV)a. Capacity of feedback systemsb. Cognitive radios/dynamic spectrum accessc. Humans-in-the-loop and brain machine

interfaces4. Signal Processing (JA)

a. Full duplex communicationb. Implementation of capacity achieving

techniques such as interference alignment, MUD, DPC-like precoding

c. Human information acquisitiond. Compressed sensing and sampling limits*

5. Statistics and Machine Learning (AD)a. Application to massive data sets;

computational efficiencyb. High-dimensional statistics, PCA

6. Genetics and Molecular Biology (MM, OM, JA)

a. Limits of DNA processing and compressionb. Adapting IT Tools to Genomics; Bio-inspired

algorithms for ITc. Evolutionary biology

7. Theoretical Computer Science (AD)a. Seen as a major area of blurring with us

(list decoding, security, etc.)b. Computation as a constraint?

8. Physics (AM)a. Statistical physics, entropyb. Quantum information theory

9. Economics and Finance (EY)a. Value of information in economic decisionsb. Optimal pricing with limited informationc. Information economics

10. Neuroscience was removed, unfortunately

Committee Recommendation 1(for BOG discussion)

1. Consider launching a new journal to promote these intersections/special topics• “IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Information Theory”• About 4-6 special issues a year; very selective• Set very high bar for guest editor team (requiring

experts outside of IT if a cross-cutting topic)• Could be overseen by BOG while incubating• Could relieve some pressure on Trans. IT, give more

people a chance to serve as Editors• Provide an alternative for IT-focused special topics to

JSAC or rare (but very popular) Trans IT special issues• Could provide new revenue stream to ITSoc (especially

if electronic only), this is secondary however

Committee Recommendations 2 and 3(for BOG discussion)

2. Make special efforts to recognize novel, meritorious and higher risk papers outside the IT mainstream• Doing a fairly good job at this already, e.g. recent ITSoc

best paper awards on Raptor codes (Shokrollahi), LDPC decoding (Luby et al), and compressed sensing (Candes et al, Donoho).

• Could establish a new award for highly creative applications of IT to other disciplines, analagous to IT/ComSoc award

3. Promote IT intersections at ITSoc-sponsored conferences

• ITA doing a great job of this, e.g. with keynotes• Could encourage ISIT and ITW’s to do so as well, and

ensure CFPs encourage submissions on these topics

Committee Recommendations 4 and 5(for BOG discussion)

4. Encourage and promote broad-minded and accessible instruction of information theory at universities• Cover did this very successfully at Stanford• How to give such encouragement? ITSoc Teaching

award?

5. Publish much of this report, recommendations, upon BOG approval in ITSoc newsletter• Comparable to the IT/ComSoc paper award but for the

complement of communications

We are open to other ideas! In particular how to influence funding agencies in/outside US