International Symposium on Information Theory

International Symposium on Information Theory
Name	International Symposium on Information Theory
Abbreviation	ISIT
Discipline	Information theory
Organizer	IEEE Information Theory Society
First	1948
Frequency	Annual

Contents

International Symposium on Information Theory is the principal annual meeting sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE Information Theory Society that gathers researchers in Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Richard Hamming, David Slepian-era networks to present developments in Shannon's theorem-related topics. The symposium connects communities associated with Bell Labs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley and laboratories such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Research to exchange results on coding theory, cryptography, and signal processing. Over decades, ISIT has interacted with institutions including INRIA, Max Planck Society, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Microsoft Research and events like the International Congress of Mathematicians.

History

ISIT grew out of postwar networks of researchers seeking to extend Claude Shannon's 1948 work and was influenced by collaborations at Bell Labs, Harvard University, Princeton University, Cornell University and University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Early meetings drew figures associated with Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Richard Hamming and Claude Shannon and overlapped in personnel with conferences such as the Symposium on Information Theory and workshops hosted by National Bureau of Standards and RAND Corporation. Through the Cold War era interactions with scientists from Soviet Union-affiliated institutes, including Steklov Institute of Mathematics and later exchanges with Russian Academy of Sciences, the symposium expanded into a global forum attracting participants from University of Cambridge, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, Technical University of Munich and Tsinghua University.

The symposium is governed by the IEEE Information Theory Society board and program committees composed of fellows from IEEE, Association for Computing Machinery, American Mathematical Society and national academies like the National Academy of Sciences (United States), Royal Society, Académie des sciences (France). Steering committees have included representatives from University of Illinois, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Columbia University, New York University and corporate labs such as AT&T Bell Laboratories, Facebook AI Research, Google Research and Intel Labs. Local organizing committees coordinate with universities such as University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Melbourne and governmental sponsors including National Science Foundation, European Research Council and ministries like Ministry of Education (China).

Proceedings are published under the aegis of IEEE Xplore and indexed by repositories associated with arXiv and bibliographic services like MathSciNet, Zentralblatt MATH and Scopus. Typical proceedings include invited talks by laureates such as recipients of the Shannon Award, IEEE Medal of Honor, Turing Award and papers later expanded into journal articles in venues like IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Journal of the ACM, Annals of Statistics and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. Special sessions have been co-located with meetings such as the International Conference on Machine Learning, NeurIPS, IEEE International Conference on Communications, European Signal Processing Conference and workshops by Simons Foundation.

ISIT presentations have included landmark results linked to Shannon capacity, Reed–Solomon codes, Turbo codes, Low-density parity-check codes, Polar code, Network coding and breakthroughs by researchers affiliated with École Polytechnique, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and University of California, San Diego. Numerous awardees of the Shannon Award, Claude E. Shannon Award, IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award and Young Investigator Award have given seminal lectures at the symposium. Cross-disciplinary impacts appeared in talks bridging work from H. Vincent Poor, Thomas Cover, Imre Csiszár, Rudolf Ahlswede, Elwyn Berlekamp and Andrew Viterbi.

Typical attendance ranges from graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from ETH Zurich, Imperial College London, Seoul National University, University of Tokyo to senior faculty from Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Michigan and researchers from industry labs like Nokia Bell Labs, Samsung Research, Cisco Systems and Amazon Science. The symposium features plenary talks, poster sessions, student paper competitions endorsed by societies including IEEE Communications Society and career panels often hosted by representatives of European Space Agency, NASA and funding bodies such as DFG and ANR.

ISIT is held annually at venues rotating among continents with past sites including Prague, Honolulu, Toronto, Melbourne, Seville, Vancouver, Beijing, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm and Kyoto. Host institutions have included Technical University of Denmark, University of Oxford, University of California, Los Angeles, McMaster University and The University of Sydney. Special centennial or milestone symposia have been organized in collaboration with long-standing partners such as Bell Labs, Microsoft Research and national academies like the Royal Society.

Category:Academic conferences Category:IEEE events