Information-theorists work hard, play hard
The Fourth Workshop on Information Theoretic Methods in Science and Engineering (WITMSE 2011) was held in Helsinki on August 7-10, 2011, hosted by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki (UH) and HIIT. Technical sessions took place at the City Centre Campus of UH on Unioninkatu. The technical co-chairs were Prof Petri Myllymäki, Dr Teemu Roos, Prof Ioan Tabus, and Prof Kenji Yamanishi. The Honorary Chair of the workshop was Prof Emeritus Jorma Rissanen. The workshop was sponsored by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and the EU Pascal Network of Excellence.
More like David than Goliath
Compared to many other scientific meetings, WITMSE is a small workshop. After, for instance, the yearly IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) with several hundred participants, which took place right before WITMSE in St Petersburg, the about 40 participants at WITMSE create a completely different atmosphere: less formal and more focused. WITMSE is also very international: we had people from Finland (11), USA (8), Denmark (4), the Netherlands (3), Japan (3), Israel (2), Australia (2), Brazil (2), Italy (1), and Canada (1).
While small, WITMSE manages year after year to attract many of the top researchers in the field. This year, the ISIT symposium, and the new direct fast train connection between St Petersburg and Helsinki, probably attracted a few additional high profile researchers to Helsinki. Another and probably the most important reason was that Jorma Rissanen, a name familiar to all information-theorists, was actively involved in organizing and hosting the workshop.
Tim van Erven (4th from left) and Jorma Rissanen (5th from left) and other participants discoursing at the welcoming reception.
From Quantum Entropy to Overlapping Cell Nuclei
The workshop addressed hot topics at the intersection of statistics, information theory, machine learning, and their applications. The technical program featured three plenary lectures and 26 invited talks.
The three plenary talks addressed positioning techniques (Dr Mati Wax, Wavion Wireless Networks), random coding and statistical physics (Prof Neri Merhav, Technion), and minimal Markov models (Veronica Gonzalez-Lopez and Jesus Garcia, State University of Campinas). The invited talks presented work on topics such as quantum entropy, error-correcting codes, data compression, risk management, category theory, biometric system design, and image processing, to name a few. Abstracts of the talks are available at the workshop web site and will be published in the proceedings.
Hard Work, Hard Play
The technical program was complemented with a busy social program. A welcoming reception (see photo above) provided the attendees with a good chance to make acquaintance with one another. On Monday evening, the Rector of the University of Helsinki offered a reception in the Main Building, and on Tuesday, there was a Banquet Dinner at Restaurant Uunisaari with a chance to enjoy Finnish sauna and swim in the sea. The sauna proved to be a memorable experience and the first time for many. (It should be pointed out that the sauna burned down several days after the workshop.)
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