2024 Information Theory and ApplicationsWorkshop

Sunday–Friday, February 18–23

Bahia Resort, San Diego

A casual gathering of researchers applying theory to diverse areas in science and engineering

A bit ab't ITA

The "Information: Theory and Applications" (ITA) workshop is a multidisciplinary meeting of academic and industrial researchers applying theory to diverse scientific and technological disciplines. Unlike most workshops and conferences, ITA presentations are by invitation only. Speakers are encouraged to present their most significant and accessible work of the year, regardless of whether it appeared elsewhere. Instead of plenary talks, ITA features plenary sessions, where prominent researchers present complementary views of timely topics. Students present at poster sessions with catered lunches, and outstanding graduating students and postdocs selected by their home institutions present at Graduation Day, with several jury-awarded “Sun, Sea, and Sand” Prizes for the most outstanding presentations.

Beyond research promotion and dissemination, ITA strives to foster a cohesive and supportive research community that brings together students, postdocs, faculty, industrial researchers, and potential employers. It does so via multiple ice-breaking, networking, and social activities that initiate and stimulate discussions, interactions, and ongoing collaborations.

Yet truth be told, a small few of ITA's participants join us for the ubiquitous EATA feasts, including breakfasts, lunches, refreshment breaks, and receptions, for the captivating sessions on the beach and sea, and above all, San Diego's summer in the winter weather.

We cordially invite you to join ITA 2024. If you would like to present a talk or organize a technical session or social event, please write to us at ita@ucsd.edu. A bientot!

Registration

Register

Registration includes daily breakfasts, morning and afternoon refreshments, light lunches on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, light food Thursday and Friday, and evening refreshments at the hospitality suite.

Registration is for attendance only. Talk presentation requires a separate invitation. If you are interested in presenting a talk, please contact us.

Plenary Sessions

Five plenary sessions, each with several prominent researchers providing a rounded view of an important and timely topic. Details will be added soon.
Monday

Innovations that May Empower 6G

SpeakerSpeakerSpeaker
Moderator
Robert Heath
UCSD
Tuesday

Advances in Information Theory

Speaker
University of Arizona
Speaker
University of Southern California
Speaker
Ohio State
Moderator
Stark Draper
University of Toronto
Wednesday

New Developments in Algorithmic Economics

Speaker
Stanford
SpeakerSpeaker
Caltech
UC Irvine
Thursday

Learning and Reasoning

SpeakerSpeakerSpeaker
Friday

Information, Meaning, and Understanding in Large Models

Speaker
University of Maryland
SpeakerSpeaker
UCLA & Amazon

Award Sessions

The year’s award winning papers at major journals and conferences

Didn’t get to attend all technical conferences last year? Were too busy to read every technical magazine cover to cover? Not to worry. ITA has got you covered! Join our “Award Sessions” for a 1-hour up close and personal view of the “best research of the year”. At Monday’s last session, we will cover best journal papers from EE disciplines, and at Thursday’s last session, best conference papers in the CS and ML areas. At the end of each session, you will see that we really kept “The Best of The Best for Last”.

Monday 4:30 pm

Information Theory Paper Award
A Unified Framework for One-shot Achievability via the Poisson Matching Lemma

Cheuk Ting Li, Venkat Anantharam


Information Theory / Communication Societies Paper Award
Age of Information in Random Access Channels

Xingran Chen, Konstantinos Gatsis, Hamed Hassani, Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti


Signal Processing Best Paper Award
NIMA: Neural Image Assessment

Hossein Talebi, Peyman Milanfar

Thursday 4:30 pm

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) Outstanding Paper Award
A Watermark for Large Language Models

John Kirchenbauer, Jonas Geiping, Yuxin Wen, Jonathan Katz, Ian Miers, Tom Goldstein


Neural Information Processing Symposium (NeurIPS) Outstanding Main Track Paper Award
Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage?

Rylan Schaeffer, Brando Miranda, Sanmi Koyejo


Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Best Paper Award
Do Androids Laugh at Electric Sheep? Humor “Understanding” Benchmarks from The New Yorker Caption Contest

Jack Hessel, Ana Marasovic, Jena D. Hwang, Lillian Lee, Jeff Da, Rowan Zellers, Robert Mankoff, Yejin Choi

Invited Sessions

Scroll or Swipe to view all

Adaptive and stochastic optimization
Mladen Kolar

Krishnakumar Balasubramanian

Chaoyue Liu

Michael Mahoney

Mladen Kolar

Array Sensing
Christoph Mecklenbrauker

Peter Gerstoft

Martin Hardt

Ralf Muller

Piya Pal

Coding and Security
Muriel Medard

Rafael Oliveira

Muriel Medard

Distributed and federated learning
Hamid Jafarkhani

Erdem Koyuncu

Nicolo Michelusi

Hamid Jafarkhani

Graph Signal Processing
Antonio Marques

Geert Leus

Florian Meyer

Yanning Shen

Antonio Marques

Individualized Decision-Making
Ben Recht

Kyra Gan

Yongyi Guo

Benjamin Recht

Berk Ustun

Large language models
Ziteng Sun

Ahmad Beirami

Samet Oymak

Yu-Xiang Wang

Ziteng Sun

Learning/Optimization/Control in Smart Grids
Yuanyuan Shi

Deepjyoti Deka

Yuanyuan Shi

Lloyd Welch: In Memoriam
Al Hales

Vijay Kumar

Stephen Wicker

Al Hales

Machine Learning and Logic
Wojtek Szpankowski

Alexander Gray

Luis Lastras

Abram Magner

Changlong Wu

Machine Learning Approaches to Information Theory
Haim Permuter

Shirin Bidokhti

Hesam Mahdavifar

Krishna Narayanan

Haim Permuter

ML Based Compression
Krishna Narayanan

Jun Chen

Ashish Khisti

Optimization, Sampling, and Games from Classical Mechanics
Jun-Kun Wang

Qijia Jiang

Andre Wibisono

Ashia Wilson

Jun-Kun Wang

People-Centric ITA
Nihar Shah

Irene Lo

Madeleine Udell

Praveen Venkatesh

Jingyan Wang

Private Optimization with Correlated Noise
Christopher Choquette

Krishnamurthy Dvijotham

Arun Ganesh

Abhradeep Thakurta

Zheng Xu

Quantum LDPC Codes for Fault-Tolerant Computation
Nithin Raveendran

Narayanan Rengaswamy

Siyi Yang

Hanwen Yao

Nithin Raveendran

Reed-Muller and Polar Codes
Henry Pfister

Navin Kashyap

Namyoon Lee

Hsin-Po Wang

Henry Pfister

Statistical learning for analysis and design of control systems
Stephen Tu

Sicun Gao

Sylvia Herbert

Lin Yang

Ingvar Ziemann

Topics and advances in sequential decision making
Yian Ma

Quanquan Gu

Nikki Kuang

Aldo Pacchiano

Stephen Tu

Schedule



Sunday
6:30 PMReception, Nelson (5th floor ballroom)
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
8:00 AMCatered breakfast, ITA Cove (beach)
9:00 AM
Plenary session, Nelson (5th floor ballroom)
  • Monday: Innovation that may empower 6G
  • Tuesday: Three cheers for information theory
  • Thursday: Learning and reasoning
  • Friday: Information, meaning, and understanding in large models
10:15 AMBreak, light refreshments, Bahia Patio
10:30 AMFive parallel sessions, four talks each
11:50 PM
Lunch break, Nelson (5th floor ballroom) (except Friday)
  • Monday: Know thy neighbor - lightning introductions to fellow participants , lunch for session participants
  • Tuesday: State of the Information Theory Society, Stark Draper, lunch for session participants
  • Thursday: (1) NSF presentation, (2) Hello boss - recruitment event, light refreshments for session attendees
  • Friday: Fun Bahia Patio, lunch on your own
1:20 PMFive parallel sessions, four talks each
2:40 PMBreak, refreshments, Bahia Patio
3:00 PMFive parallel sessions, four talks each
4:20 PMBreak
4:30 PM
Special sessions: Nelson (5th floor ballroom) (except Friday)
  • Monday: Award Sessions: Best 2023 papers from IT, IT/Comm, SP societies
  • Tuesday: The secret to your success, followed by Taco Tuesday outing
  • Thursday: Award Sessions: Best 2023 papers from NeurIPS, ICML, ACL
  • Friday: Farewell bash, light food
5:30 PMDinner on your own (except Taco Tuesday), socialize at the Cabrillo Suite
7:00 PMFriends, tv, games, refreshments at the Cabrillo Suite
Wednesday
8:00 AMCatered breakfast, ITA Cove (beach)
9:00 AMThree parallel sessions, four talks each
10:20 AMBreak, light refreshments, Bahia Patio
10:40 AMGraduation day talks, three sessions, four talks each
12:00 PMGraduation day posters and general posters, catered lunch, Bahia Patio
1:40 PMPlenary session: New developments in algorithmic economics, Ballroom
2:55 PMBreak, refreshments
3:10 PMITA 2025 Challenge kickoff session: Where we formulate a challenge for next year’s ITA, Ballroom
4:00 PMBreak
3:55 PMEntertainment session, Ballroom
6:45 PMBanquet, entertainment, Graduation day awards, Ballroom

Daily Schedule

Every day, two sessions will be held on the Bahia Belle shown in the background

Location Location Location

Bahia Resort, San Diego

TripAdvisor's consistently favorite San Diego Hotel, the Bahia Resort is nestled on a serene private peninsula jutting into the San Diego Bay. It features an expansive private white-sand, cabana dotted, beachfront, a boat dock, lush tropical gardens, exotic waterfowls, tennis courts, swimming pool, and fitness center, all providing an idyllic setup for our meeting, collaboration, and recreation. The Pacific Ocean, oceanfront boardwalk, Belmont Amusement Park, and many restaurants are just a few minutes walk away, and the bustling neighborhoods of Mission- and Pacific-Beach a short distance beyond.

The Bahia was recently renovated and boasts modern amply-sized rooms, many with balconies, patios, and striking water views. Our room rates are significantly discounted, with standard rooms featuring varying views at $165, larger studios at $199, and suites at $350, all inclusive of resort fees.

Book here

Map of the rooms in Bahia

Nearby Attractions

Special Events

Graduation Day
Award Sessions
This year’s award winning papers from top journals and conferences.


Pia Pal and Ananda Theertha Suresh
Information Theory Society
State of the Information Theory society
President's address and town hall. Lunch served.


Stark Draper
The Secret to Your Success
The Secret to Your Success
Career advice, productivity tips, making an impact.

Rashmi Vinayak and Sanghamitra Dutta
Graduation Day
Graduation Day
Graduating students and postdocs present their work, Jury awarded prizes.


Parinaz Naghizadeh
Student Posters

ITA 3452 Challenge Kickoff

Propose an award-bearing challenge for the next ITA.
An Update from NSF
NSF Opportunities
New programs and funding opportunities.

Alfred Hero & Phil Regalia



Social Events

Several activities that bring together students, postdocs, researchers, and faculty, foster new friendships and research collaborations, and facilitate employment and mentorship opportunities.

Fun and Games
Fun and Games
Friends, games, TV, and refreshments
Free No Free Lunch Lunch
Know Thy Neighbor
Lightning intros to fellow participants. Lunch served.
Create your “ITA Business Card”

Rick Wesel

Morning run
Morning runs
Scenic 5km runs around the bay, see popup for details
Entertainment party
Entertainment Session
Lightning intros to fellow participants. Lunch served.
Create your “ITA Business Card”

Anand Sarwate and Mary Wootters

Hello Boss
Hello Boss
Farewell Bash
Farewell Bash
Fun, food, and farewell friends

ITA + ALT = ITALT

This year, the ALT Conference returns to San Diego to be co-located with ITA. On Saturday February 24th we will hold the joint ITALT symposium featuring tutorials by Ankur Moitra and Yuanzhi LI, a professional development panel, and social/mentoring activities, bridge the learning theory and information theory communities. Organized by Vidya Muthukumar.

EATA

Daybreak

Daily
8 AM

Nightcap

Daily
7 PM

Reception

Sun
6:30 PM

Know thy neighbor lunch

(for Attendees Only)

Mon
12 - 1:20 PM

IT-Session Lunch

(for Attendees Only)

Mon
12:30-2 PM

Taco Tuesday

Wed
5:45pm

Graduation
Lunch

Wed
12 PM

Banquet

Wed
6:30 PM

Farewell

Fri
4:30 PM

Sponsors

QualcommQualcomm InstituteSamsungUCSD HDSIUCSD HDSI

Code of Conduct

The ITA workshop and community are built upon the core values of collegiality, support, and dignity for all, and we endorse the conference codes of conduct adopted by the ACM, IEEE, and the Information Theory Society. Disrespectful, offensive, and inappropriate behavior is not welcome at our events. If you observe such behavior, please inform one of our staff or email us at ita@ucsd.edu.