The IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) is the biggest annual conference of the information theory society. It has been held continuously since 1954. It covers almost all the topics related to the studies on information theory, including coding, compression, statistics, complexity, inference, cryptography, as well as many innovative directions such as networking, quantum computing, and other emerging applications of information theory. It is considered the highest standard of IEEE conferences. It has been supported by US Funding Agencies, especially NSF, to facilitate the participation by students and young researchers.
This year, ISIT will be held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The location is chosen not only because it is one of the birth places of information theory, but also an on-campus conference is aimed at reducing the travel costs of attendees. We expect the size of the conference to be larger than in recent years, and thus travel support is more crucial for this conference. ISIT has a well established method of allocating the requested travel funds by selecting the most meritorious and needy students to present their papers at the symposium. This year, the travel support is combined with other forms of local arrangement including the use of MIT dorm rooms, organized child care, etc., to encourage more student attendance.
Project Outcome Report CIF: Travel Grant for the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, July1 to 6, 2012 PI : Lizhong Zheng Award Number : 1244885 Program Officer: Phillip Regalia The IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) is the major conference of the IEEE information theory society. Every year, many lastest research results are published in this conference. Also, the society BoG meeting, many sub-committee meetings, and the society’s award ceremony, all take place in this conference. NSF has a major sponsor to this conference for many years. ISIT 2012 was held in Boston Massachusetts, on the campus of MIT. The general co-chairs are Prof. Muriel Medard, and Prof. Lizhong Zheng, both faculty members of MIT. Prof. Medard also served as the president of the information theory society in 2012. There were in total 903 registered participants in this conference, and 633 technical papers published in the conference proceedings. The total budget of the conference, including the registrations and other incomes, is $747,330.35, out of which $10,000 was from this travel grant provided by NSF. The organizing committee made an effort to reduce the cost for conference participants, by the means of reducing the registration fee and providing on campus dormitory lodging to the students. The NSF support, together with the supports from other sources, was used to reimburse the travel costs of student participants. This is limited to graduate students from US institutes that are the main authors of published papers. These grants are divided into $500 per traveler, and reimbursed against invoices of flights and lodging from the recipients. In total about 50 students received supports from these grants. This covered a large portion of the US students who traveled to this conference. The report of ISIT 2012 was submitted to the IEEE information theory society and was approved by the BoG meeting in July 2013.
