News

2021

Jan. 8th—Congratulations to Masoud Barakatain for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis Low-Complexity Forward Error Correction and Modulation for Optical Communication.

2020

Dec. 2nd—ZipperSim is released, exactly one year (to the day) since Alvin's thesis defense.
Sep. 30th—Congratulations to Mohannad Shehadeh for successfully defending his M.A.Sc. thesis Space–Time Codes from Sum-Rank Codes. Mohannad is continuing in the Ph.D. program.

2019

Dec. 31st—My last day as Senior Past-President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, so I am no longer responsible for the bylaws...
Dec. 20th—Adiós y buena suerte to Umberto Martínez-Peñas, who returns to Europe to begin the next chapter of his career! Umberto's quiet mathematical precision will be missed.
Dec. 2nd—Congratulations to Alvin Sukmadji for successfully defending his M.A.Sc. thesis on Zipper Codes: High-rate Spatially Coupled Codes with Algebraic Component Codes! Alvin is continuing in the Ph.D. program.
Jul. 17th—Congratulations to Bo Lian for successfully defending his M.A.Sc. thesis on Performance and Decoding Complexity Analysis of Short Binary Codes! Bo will be joining Huawei Canada Research Centre in Feb. 2020.
May 2nd—I am honoured to have received the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Sustained Excellence in Teaching Award.
Apr. 18th—ZMG is released.
Apr. 12th—I am pleased to serve as opponent in the Ph.D. exam of Alireza Sheikh, Communication Systems Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology. Congratulations to Alireza on his successful defense! I will remain at Chalmers on a research visit until mid-May.
Jan. 8th—Congratulations to Susanna Rumsey for successfully defending her M.A.Sc. thesis on Capacity Considerations for Data Storage in Memristor Arrays!
Jan. 7th—Welcome to new group member Saber Rahbarfam, who joins us from McMaster University.

2018

Nov. 30th—Umberto Martínez-Peñas receives the prestigious DNA (Danmarks Naturvidenskabelige Akademi or Danish Academy of Natural Sciences) doctoral dissertation prize, for his dissertation entitled "Topics on Reliable and Secure Communication using Rank-Metric and Classical Linear Codes." Congratulations Umberto!
Nov. 23rd—I deliver the inaugural L. L. Campbell Lecture in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The lectureship was endowed by a generous donation from Prof. Vijay K. Bhargava, and is named in honour of distinguished Canadian information theorist L. Lorne Campbell.
Oct. 4th—I am excited to be elected to (re-)join the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society, serving in the role of 2018 Junior Past President (and next year as Senior Past President).
Sep. 4th—Welcome to new group member Mohannad Shehadeh. Mohannad is a graduate of our very own ECE program.
June 20th—my papers with Mansoor Yousefi, entitled Information Transmission using the Nonlinear Fourier Transform, Parts I-III, published in the July 2014 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, are named as the winner of the 2018 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.
June 18th—I am named a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.
May 22nd—I deliver the 2018 Padovani Lecture, entitled An Introduction to Lattices and their Applications in Communications.
Feb. 1st—Welcome back Umberto Martínez-Peñas, who re-joins us as a postdoctoral fellow after completing his Ph.D. at Aalborg University, Denmark, last year.

2017

Dec. 19th—Farewell to postdoc Christopher G. Blake, who joins Borealis AI.
Sep. 5th—Welcome to new group member Alvin Sukmadji. Alvin is a graduate of our very own ECE program.
Aug. 17th—Arrivederci postdoctoral fellow Alberto Ravagnani! Alberto will continue as a scholar at the Claude Shannon Institute, University College Dublin.
Jun. 7th—Welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Qun Zhang, who joins us from the University of South Australia.
May 31st—Congratulations to Reza Rafie on being selected to receive the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship!
May 29th—This redesigned web site is released.
Jan. 12th—Congratulations to Lei M. Zhang for successfully defending his Ph.D.
Jan. 11th—My last day as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Very best wishes to my successor, Prakash Narayan!

2016

Dec. 7th—Congratulations to Christopher G. Blake for successfully defending his Ph.D.
Nov. 27th—I am named as a “TUM ambassador”. I am more than happy to say good things about TUM!
Nov. 2nd—Welcome to visiting Ph.D. student Umberto Martínez-Peñas, from Aalborg University, Denmark, who will be visiting until next March.
Oct. 27th—Welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Alberto Ravagnani, who joins us from the University of Neuchâtel.
September—Welcome new group members Susanna Rumsey, Bo Lian, and Amir Tasbihi. Susanna is an Engineering Science grad; Bo joins us from McMaster U., and Amir joins us from U. of Waterloo.
Jul. 12th—I am surprised and delighted to be awarded the Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service award of the IEEE Information Theory Society!
Jun. 30th—Delivering Plenary Lecture at IC Research Day, EPFL.
Jun. 24th—Congratulations to Siddarth Hari for successfully defending his Ph.D.
May 24th—Welcome to visiting Ph.D. student Netanel Raviv from the Technion, Israel, who will be visiting for the next ten weeks.
Apr. 13th—Congratulations to Siyu Liu for successfully defending his Ph.D.
Apr. 4th—Delivering a lecture on “Digital Communication over Optical Fibers” at the 2016 European School of Information Theory in Gothenberg, Sweden.
Mar. 8th—Congratulations to Chunpo Pan for successfully defending her Ph.D.

2015

Nov. 9th—Delivering Plenary Lecture on “Fiber-optic Communication via the Nonlinear Fourier Transform” at the 49th Asilomar Conference in Pacific Grove, CA.
Oct. 16th—Goodbye and best wishes to postdoctoral fellow Christian Senger, who returns to Germany to start an academic position at the University of Stuttgart!
September—Welcome new group member Reza Rafie, who joins us from the University of Alberta.
Jul. 9th—Congratulations to Siyu Liu for receiving the Best Student Paper Award (2nd place) at the 14th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory in St. John's.
Jan. 1st—Start of a five-year term as “Distinguished Professor of Digital Communication”.

2014

Nov. 13th—Delivering a lecture on “Lattices and their Communications Applications” at the 2014 Australian School of Information Theory in Adelaide. Many thanks to Chen Feng for his invaluable help with the slides!
September—Welcome new group member Masoud Barakatain, who joins us after completing his M.A.Sc. in Prof. Valaee's group in our department.
Aug. 21st—Delivering an invited talk on “Staircase Codes” at the Turbo Code Symposium in Bremen, Germany.
Aug. 14th—Congratulations to Chen Feng for successfully defending his Ph.D. He will continue his academic career as an NSERC Postdoctoral fellow working with Profs. Nazer (BU) and Gastpar (EPFL).
Jun. 25th—Delivering the Plenary Lecture at SPAWC 2014 in Toronto.
June 2nd—Congratulations to Siddarth Hari for receiving the Best Student Paper Award (1st place) at the 27th Biennial Symposium on Communications in Kingston.
May 22—I am delighted to receive a Departmental Teaching Award!

2013

Dec. 15th—My first day as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Many thanks to my predecessors Ioannis Kontoyiannis and Helmut Bölcskei!
Oct. 11th—Welcome to Joschi Brauchle, a visiting Ph.D. student from Technical University of Munich, who will stay with us for a month!
Aug. 7th—Arrivederci postdoctoral fellow Felice Manganiello! Felice will join Clemson University.
Jul. 11th—Congratulations to Mansoor Yousefi for winning the Jack Keil Wolf Student Paper Award at ISIT 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Apr. 10th—Welcome new postdoctoral fellow Christian Senger, who joins us from Ulm University!