2024 Canadian Workshop of Information Theory

Schedule

Detailed program

2024 Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT) Program [CWIT 2024] EDAS (10655 - Lampe@ece.ubc.ca):
Vancouver time Sunday, June 2 Monday, June 3 Tuesday, June 4 Wednesday, June 5
9:00 ‑ 10:00   Keynote 1: Coding for Fiber-Optic Communications Keynote 3: On Getting Higher Resolution with Fewer Bits: Information Theoretic Perspectives on ADC Architecture Short tutorial: Understanding and improving the numerical optimization underlying modern machine learning
10:00 ‑ 10:30   Coffee break Coffee break Coffee break
10:30 ‑ 11:30   M1: Integrated Sensing and Communications T1: Coding/Information Theory W1: Coding/Information Theory
11:30 ‑ 11:40    
11:40 ‑ 12:00   W2: Blockchain and Security
12:00 ‑ 12:10 Tutorial 1: Provable Dimensionality Reduction and its Applications
12:10 ‑ 12:40 Lunch break (box lunch)
12:40 ‑ 13:30 Lunch break (box lunch)  
13:30 ‑ 14:00 Keynote 2: Zeroth-Order Optimization: An Information Theoretic Perspective  
14:00 ‑ 14:30 Lunch break (box lunch) Keynote 4: Low-bandwidth computation on top of error correction  
14:30 ‑ 14:50 Coffee break  
14:50 ‑ 15:00 M2: Multi-user/Multi-terminal Communication  
15:00 ‑ 15:30 Tutorial 2: Lossy Data Compression using Deep Learning Coffee break  
15:30 ‑ 16:30 T2: Data Science and Machine Learning  
16:30 ‑ 16:50 Coffee break  
16:50 ‑ 17:00 M3: THz and Optical Communication  
17:00 ‑ 17:40    
17:40 ‑ 18:30      
18:30 ‑ 19:00        
19:00 ‑ 21:00 Welcome reception CSIT meeting and light dinner (Sushi) Workshop dinner  
21:00 ‑ 22:00      

Sunday, June 2

Sunday, June 2 12:00 - 14:00

Tutorial 1: Provable Dimensionality Reduction and its Applications

Nicholas Harvey (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Room: Allard 104

Sunday, June 2 14:00 - 15:00

Lunch break (box lunch)

Room: Allard Foyer

Sunday, June 2 15:00 - 17:00

Tutorial 2: Lossy Data Compression using Deep Learning

Jun Chen and Ashish Khisti (McMaster University and University of Toronto, Canada)
Room: Allard 104

Sunday, June 2 19:00 - 21:00

Welcome reception

Allard Terrace Lounge (Room 402)

Monday, June 3

Monday, June 3 9:00 - 10:00

Keynote 1: Coding for Fiber-Optic Communications

Frank Kschischang (University of Toronto, Canada)
Room: Allard 104

Monday, June 3 10:00 - 10:30

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Monday, June 3 10:30 - 12:10

M1: Integrated Sensing and Communications

Room: Allard 104
10:30 Non-coherent Over-the-Air Consensus for Wireless Decentralized Learning
Nicolò Michelusi (Arizona State University, USA)
10:50 Beamforming Design for Integrated Sensing and Communications Using Uplink-Downlink Duality
Kareem M. Attiah (University of Toronto & Faculty of Engineering, Canada); Wei Yu (University of Toronto, Canada)
11:10 Secure Communication with Moving Eavesdropper Using Integrated Sensing and Communication
Ahmed A. A. Al-Habob and Octavia A. Dobre (Memorial University, Canada); Yindi Jing (University of Alberta, Canada)
11:30 Joint Design of Beamforming and Reflection Coefficients in Integrated Sensing and Backscatter Communication Systems
Shayan Zargari and Diluka Galappaththige (University of Alberta, Canada); Chintha Tellambura (The University of Alberta, Canada)
11:50 Localization in Multipath Environments via Active Sensing with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
Yinghan Li and Wei Yu (University of Toronto, Canada)

Monday, June 3 12:10 - 13:30

Lunch break (box lunch)

Room: Allard Foyer

Monday, June 3 13:30 - 14:30

Keynote 2: Zeroth-Order Optimization: An Information Theoretic Perspective

Tara Javidi (University of California San Diego, USA)
Room: Allard 104

Monday, June 3 14:30 - 14:50

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Monday, June 3 14:50 - 16:30

M2: Multi-user/Multi-terminal Communication

Room: Allard 104
14:50 Efficient Resource Management in Uplink Symbiotic and Cooperative Backscatter Networks
Azar Hakimi and Shayan Zargari (University of Alberta, Canada); Chintha Tellambura (The University of Alberta, Canada)
15:10 Achievable Rate Regions for Multiple-Time-Slot Multiple Access Computation Offloading
Xiaomeng Liu and Timothy N. Davidson (McMaster University, Canada)
15:30 An Array Receiver Based on Two-Layer $J$-Best Selection / Maximal-Ratio Combining
Sebastien Roy (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
15:50 Coded Downlink Massive Random Access
Ryan Song (University of Toronto, Canada); Kareem M. Attiah (University of Toronto & Faculty of Engineering, Canada); Wei Yu (University of Toronto, Canada)
16:10 A Graph Neural Network Approach for Phase Shifter Network Online Calibration
Idan Roth (The University of British Columbia, Canada); Lutz Lampe (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Monday, June 3 16:30 - 16:50

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Monday, June 3 16:50 - 18:30

M3: THz and Optical Communication

Room: Allard 104
16:50 Bayesian Phase Search for Probabilistic Shaping
Mohammad Taha Askari and Lutz Lampe (University of British Columbia, Canada)
17:10 Adaptive Optics using Single Pixel Imagers for Atmospheric Laser Satellite Downlinks
Mohamadreza Pashazanoosi and Steve Hranilovic (McMaster University, Canada); Oliver J Pitts (National Research Council Canada, Canada); Costel Flueraru (National Research Council of Canada, Canada); Antony Orth (National Research Council Canada, Canada)
17:30 Channel Estimation for Wideband Terahertz MIMO using Pulse Spectroscopy
Ayush Madhan-Sohini and Adebola Olutayo (The University of British Columbia, Canada); Anas Chaaban (University of British Columbia, Canada); Jonathan F. Holzman (The University of British Columbia, Canada)
17:50 Square-Wave Spatial Optical OFDM
Zhenyu Zhang and Steve Hranilovic (McMaster University, Canada)
18:10 Precoding for Optical Wireless MISO Broadcasting
Zhenyu Zhang (McMaster University, Canada); Anas Chaaban (University of British Columbia, Canada); Steve Hranilovic (McMaster University, Canada)

Monday, June 3 19:00 - 21:00

CSIT meeting and light dinner (Sushi)

Allard Terrace Lounge (Room 402)

Tuesday, June 4

Tuesday, June 4 9:00 - 10:00

Keynote 3: On Getting Higher Resolution with Fewer Bits: Information Theoretic Perspectives on ADC Architecture

2024 Ian F Blake Lecture
Greg Wornell (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Room: Allard 104

Tuesday, June 4 10:00 - 10:30

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Tuesday, June 4 10:30 - 12:40

T1: Coding/Information Theory

Room: Allard 104
10:30 New results on MDP convolutional codes
Zitan Chen (CUHK-Shenzhen, China)
10:50 Byzantine-Tolerant Erasure Coding for Blockchains
Mohammad Jalalzai, Saeid Yazdinejad and Chen Feng (University of British Columbia, Canada)
11:10 Optimal single-letter codes are Kelly bets
Andrew Eckford (York University, Canada); Alexander S Moffett (Northeastern University, USA)
11:30
11:40 Sparse Gaussian Gradient Code
Yuxin Jiang (University of British Columbia, Canada); Wenqin Zhang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Canada); Yuan Luo (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China); Lele Wang (University of British Columbia, Canada)
12:00 New Proofs of the Kochen-Specker Theorem via Hadamard Matrices
Liam Salt and Petr Lisonek (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
12:20 Extended and Entanglement-assisted Quantum Quasi-twisted Codes
Akram Saleh (Concordia University, Canada); M. Reza Soleymani (Concordia Univerisity, Canada)

Tuesday, June 4 12:40 - 14:00

Lunch break (box lunch)

Room: Allard Foyer

Tuesday, June 4 14:00 - 15:00

Keynote 4: Low-bandwidth computation on top of error correction

Mary Wootters (Stanford University, USA)
Room: Allard 104

Tuesday, June 4 15:00 - 15:30

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Tuesday, June 4 15:30 - 17:40

T2: Data Science and Machine Learning

Room: Allard 104
15:30 Model Selection Over Partially Ordered Sets
Armeen Taeb (University of Washington, USA)
15:50 On f-Divergence Principled Domain Adaptation: An Improved Framework
Ziqiao Wang and Yongyi Mao (University of Ottawa, Canada)
16:10 An Information-Theoretic Framework for Out-of-Distribution Generalization
Wenliang Liu and Guanding Yu (Zhejiang University, China); Lele Wang and Renjie Liao (University of British Columbia, Canada)
16:30
16:40 Beyond Words: A Multimodal Exploration of Persuasion in Memes to Address Misinformation
Amirhossein Abaskohi, Amirhossein Dabiriaghdam, Lele Wang and Giuseppe Carenini (University of British Columbia, Canada)
17:00 Constructions for Nonadaptive Tropical Group Testing
Nicholas Kwan (University of Toronto, Canada)
17:20 PCR Group Testing with Disjunct Matrices
Guozheng Gong and Lele Wang (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Tuesday, June 4 19:00 - 22:00

Workshop dinner

Room: University Golf Club

Wednesday, June 5

Wednesday, June 5 9:00 - 10:00

Short tutorial: Understanding and improving the numerical optimization underlying modern machine learning

Mark Schmidt (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Room: Allard 104

Wednesday, June 5 10:00 - 10:30

Coffee break

Room: Allard Foyer

Wednesday, June 5 10:30 - 11:30

W1: Coding/Information Theory

Room: Allard 104
10:30 Dynamic Programming-Based Capacity Bounds for Deletion Channels
Hassan Khodaiemehr (The University of British Columbia, Canada)
10:50 In-Place Continuous Compression for Delay Tolerant Systems
Sanku Roy and Ioanis Nikolaidis (University of Alberta, Canada)
11:10 Boosting Graph Alignment Performance via Attribute Information
Ziao Wang (University of British Columbia, Canada); Weina Wang (Carnegie Mellon University, USA); Lele Wang (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Wednesday, June 5 11:40 - 12:40

W2: Blockchain and Security

Room: Allard 104
11:40 NIROPoK-Based Post-Quantum Sidechain Design on Ethereum
Hassan Khodaiemehr (The University of British Columbia, Canada); Chen Feng (University of British Columbia, Canada)
12:00 Merged Bitcoin: Increasing Blockchain Security by Combining Hashing Resources
Christopher Blake (No affiliation); David Tse (Stanford University, USA)
12:20 Scaling Blockchain from First Principles
Tianyu Shi and Chen Feng (University of British Columbia, Canada)