ISL News
New Directions in the Science of Information, Nov. 4th, UC Berkeley
Join faculty and students from UC Berkeley and Stanford for a day of distinguished speakers and a research poster session as we explore “New Directions in the Science of Information.”
The event will be held in the Kinzie Room of the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA and starts promptly at 9:00 a.m. PDT. Lunch will be served.
Stanford students are invited to present at the student poster session (there will be prizes for posters).
Must register to attend (registration is free). Please secure your spot by registering as soon as possible.
A bus for those attending from Stanford will be available as follows: Pick-up at Stanford (Roth Way Bus loading zone) at 7am Drop off Time at Berkeley (2150 Allston Way) at 8:45am Pick-up at Berkeley (2150 Allston Way) at 4:15pm Drop off at Stanford (Roth Way Bus loading zone) approximately at 6pm
For registration and more details see http://www.soihub.org/meetings/berkeley.php
ISL faculty and students awarded 2013 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award
Former ISL student Syed Ali Jafar and postdoc Ivana Maric, along with Professor Andrea Goldsmith, were awarded the 2013 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award for their paper Breaking Spectrum Gridlock With Cognitive Radios: An Information Theoretic Perspective.
Abbas El Gamal elected to National Academy of Engineering
ISL Professor Abbas El Gamal was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his contributions in information theory, information technology, and image sensors.
Bernd Girod appointed Hancock Professor in the School of Engineering
ISL Professor Bernd Girod was appointed as the Robert L. and Audrey S. Hancock Professor in the School of Engineering.
ISL faculty and students awarded 2012 Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award
Former ISL students Seung-Jean Kim, Kwangmoo Koh, and Michael Lustig,
and ISL faculty members Stephen Boyd and Dimitry Gorinevsky were
awarded the 2012 Best Paper Award for their paper
An Interior-Point Method for Large-Scale 
-Regularized Least Squares.
The award will be presented at 2013 ICASSP.
ISL students awarded Best Student Paper of IEEE POWERCON 2012
ISL students Eric Glover (presently with Sargent and Lundy) and Chung-Ching Chang with their advisors Dimitry Gorinevsky and Sanjay Lall received First Prize for the Best Student Paper of 2012 IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2012). The team developed methods for analyzing whether electrical power distribution systems remain stable as the fraction of inverter-connected distributed generation, such as solar and wind, increases.
Andrea Goldsmith appointed Harris Professor in School of Engineering
ISL Professor Andrea Goldsmith was appointed as the first Stephen Harris Professor in the School of Engineering.
Stephen Boyd awarded 2013 IEEE Technical Field Award for Control Systems
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Professor Stephen Boyd was awarded the 2013 IEEE Technical Field Award for Control Systems, for outstanding contributions to control system engineering, science, or technology, with citation “For contributions to systems design and analysis via convex optimization”. |
ISL students take 3rd place in Interdigital Innovation Challenge
ISL students Alexandros Manolakos and Yair Noam with their advisor Andrea Goldsmith placed 3rd in the InterDigital Innovation Challenge (I2C) at GigaOM's Mobilize 2012 conference in San Francisco, winning $20,000. The team invented a novel approach for radio signal propagation and processing that allows several wireless radios to coexist on the same frequency bands while causing minimal interference.
More information is available here.
Gene F. Franklin, Professor Emeritus of electrical engineering, dies at 85
Gene F. Franklin, Professor Emeritus of electrical engineering, passed away unexpectedly on August 9, 2012, at Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, CA. He was 85 and active until a few days before his death. He was a professor for more than 50 years and a pioneer in the field of digital control systems. He authored three highly respected textbooks and helped to found and direct Stanford’s Information Systems Laboratory.
Read the full obituary here.
Stephen Boyd and Michael Grant awarded Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize
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ISL Professor Stephen Boyd and his former PhD student Michael Grant were awarded the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize for excellence in computational mathematical programming by the Mathematical Optimization Society, in a ceremony that took place at the ISMP opening ceremony in Berlin. At the same ceremony, ISL Professor Emmanuel Candes and Benjamin Recht were awarded the Lagrange Prize. |
ISL students win best co-authored paper award at ISIT 2012
Two ISL students, Kartik Venkat and Thomas Courtade, won the best co-authored paper award at the 2012 International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2012) for papers written with their advisor, Professor Tsachy Weissman. Kartik Venkat won for “Point-Wise Relations between Information and Estimation” and Thomas Courtade won for “Multi-Terminal Source Coding under Logarithmic Loss”.
See the announcement here.
Thomas Cover, acclaimed information theorist and electrical engineer, dies at 73
Tom Cover, one of the greatest information theorists and a wonderfully inspiring teacher and mentor, died in Palo Alto on March 26, 2012. During his 48 year career as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Statistics at Stanford University, he graduated 63 PhD students, authored over 120 journal papers in learning, information theory, statistical complexity, and portfolio theory; and he coauthored Elements of Information Theory, the most widely-cited book in the field. In recognition of his seminal contributions, Tom Cover received many awards and honors, including the IEEE Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, and the Outstanding Paper Award in information theory. He was a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Read the full obituary here. Visit the memorial page here.
Bernd Girod wins 2011 Technical Achievement Award in Signal Processing
Bernd Girod was awarded the 2011 Technical Achievement Award by the IEEE Signal Processing Society “for his contributions to the theory and practice of video communications, search and processing.”
See the announcement here.
Tom Cover gives Shannon Memorial Lecture
Tom Cover presented the Shannon Memorial Lecture at UC-San Diego on September 19, 2011. The event is an endowed lectureship in honor of Claude Shannon, the founder of Information Theory.
Additional information can be found at the program website.
ISL students receive “Top 10% Paper” honor
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ISL Students Mina Makar, Yao-Chung Lin and Andre F. de Araujo received a “Top 10% Paper” honor at the Multimedia Signal Processing 2011 Conference in Hangzhou, China, for their paper, “Compression of VQM Features for Low Bit-Rate Video Quality Monitoring.” Mina are Andre are students in the Image Video and Multimedia Systems Group, headed by Professor Bernd Girod. Yao-Chung is a recent PhD recipient and alumni of the IVMS group, and is currently with Apple, Inc. |
Honorary doctorate awarded to Tom Kailath ISL Professor Emeritus Thomas
Kailath was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Israel Institute of Technology (a.k.a. Technion), with citation, “In recognition of outstanding scientific achievements through seminal contributions to information theory, detection and estimation, linear systems and control, array signal processing, VLSI chip design and manufacturing; in appreciation for the education of a generation of leaders in science and engineering; an acknowledgment of successful technology transfers to industry; and in gratitude for his cooperation the scientific institutions of the state of Israel.”
Abbas El Gamal wins IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award
ISL Professor Abbas El Gamal has been named the 2012 recipient of the IEEE’s prestigious Claude E. Shannon Award, for his contributions to the field of information science. Professor El Gamal is the fourth faculty member of ISL to be awarded this honor. Others are Professors Thomas Cover, Thomas Kailath, and Robert M. Gray.
Thomas Kailath named recipient of the Eta Kappa Nu Karapetoff Award
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ISL Emeritus Prof. Thomas Kailath has been named the recipient of the 2010 Eta Kappa Nu Karapetoff Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement. Since 1992, this major recognition of career accomplishments has been presented annually to a practitioner of electrical or computer engineering who has distinguished himself/herself through an invention, development, or discovery in the field of electrical or computer technology. Factors considered in bestowing this award include the impact and scope of applicability, the impact on the public welfare, and the impact on standard of living and/or global stability. |
Arogyaswami Paulraj wins the Alexander Graham Bell Medal
ISL Professor Arogyaswami Paulraj has won the Alexander Graham Bell Medal. The Alexander Graham Bell Medal is the highest IEEE honor for achievements in telecommunications sciences and engineering, awarded for exceptional contributions to the advancement of communications sciences and engineering in the field of telecommunications.
Award for Andrea Goldsmith
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Prof. Andrea Goldsmith was named a 2010 Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Read the article here. |