Student Committee Report and Update on the 2010 North American School of Information Theory Aylin Yener, Penn State Presented at the BoG meeting, ISIT10 June 13, 2010, Austin TX

Past Event at CISS 2010 This year, we introduced a new networking event at CISS The event was geared towards graduating students looking for postdoc and industry positions. Pizza lunch was served. About 100 students attended.

ISIT 2010 Event 1 June 14, 2010 (tomorrow), 12:50-2:30, Room 400/402: round table research discussion Topics: Feedback for Multi-User Channels; Complexity and Energy; Interference Alignment; Capacity Scaling of Ad Hoc Networks; Networking/Delay; Distributed Storage; Polar Codes; Secrecy; Joint Source Channel Coding; Security and Networking; Deterministic Models; Game Dynamics on Networks Lunch will be provided T-shirts will be distributed to students

ISIT 2010 Event 2 June 17, 2010 (Thursday), 12:50-2:30, Room 400/402: Panel discussion “Recipes for a good talk” Panelists: – Massimo Franceschetti – Emina Soljanin – Emre Telatar – Venu Veeravalli – Aaron Wagner Lunch will be provided

Student Members Existing: Bobak Nazer Salim ElRouayeb Rui Costa New: Ravi Tandon Ye Tian If you get the chance, please take the opportunity to thank these young volunteers for their service

Call for volunteers: The student committee needs more members to help organize events and outreach programs Event attendance has grown significantly in the past three years. –We need more volunteers for student leadership as our membership grows, and as the current volunteers transition to post-student life. – Please encourage students that you feel are potential leaders and ask them to contact Aylin.

77 Update on the 2010 North American School of Information Theory Update on the 2010 North American School of Information Theory Aylin Yener & Gerhard Kramer

88 Logistics 2010 School to be at USC in Los Angeles, Thu-Sun, Aug 5-8, 2010 Applications due: April 30 Confirmation due: June 10 Web site:

99 Organizing Committee General Chairs: Aylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer Program and Applications: Michelle Effros and Tracey Ho Local Arrangements: Mike Neely and Alex Dimakis Web Site: Matthieu Bloch Treasurer: Sriram Viswanath

10 In 2008 and 2009 Format: 3 lectures, 4.5 hours each Attendance was 140+ students in 2009 Most students stayed in NW dorms in 2009

11 New in 2010 New format: Six 2-hour lectures by 6 speakers Motivation: - Increase instructor-to-student ratio - Expand number of topics - New format will be easier on the instructors and students School was registered with IEEE as a “conference” and the ITSOC confirmed sponsorship.

12 Instructors Emmanuel Candes Andrea Goldsmith Alon Orlitsky Rudy Urbanke Sergio Verdu Jack Wolf [Padovani Lecturer]

Attendees 2010 We received 232 student applications! This is a ≈50% increase over 2009, which itself had a 40% increase in attendees as compared to 2008 We decided to “go for it” and accommodate all applicants Many international applicants –22 Canada –9 Brazil / China / Germany / India / Israel / Italy / Japan / Luxembourg / Saudi Arabia

Attendees 2010 (status 6/11/10) Number of Applicants: 232 students Confirmed: 192 –Housing: 137 (≈135 in 2009) –No Housing: 47 –Will Attend: 8 Cancellations: 26 Undecided (5)/no response (9): 14 Others: 6 instructors, 8 organizers, 10 junior faculty Total: ≈ 220 people

15 Estimated Budget USC housing: $27k –$50/person/night x 4 nights x 135 Food: 4 days, 220 attendees ≈ $30k Instructor/organizer travel = $6k Materials = $5k Incidentals = $2k Total: $70k

16 Fundraising Housing fee: $120/student x 135 students ≈$16k ITSOC: $20k ARL/ARO: proposal for $15k (likely: ≥ $10k ) NSF: proposal for $25k (hope: ≥ $10k) Individual school contributions: –Rice: $2k –Penn State (NSRC): $1k –UT Austin (WNCG): $1k –Princeton: $0.5k –Texas A&M, USC: to be determined –Caltech, MIT, Notre Dame, Stanford: contacted

17 Summary and Outlook 2010 School received a record 232 applications. Things are on track. Enthusiasm about the School has spread! Enthusiasm about the School has spread! We have volunteers lined up to organize the 2011, 2012, 2013 schools: –2011: UT Austin (Sriram Vishwanath) –2012: Cornell (Aaron Wagner and Salman Avestimehr) –2013: Banff (Christian Schlegel)