The Center for Science of Information (CSoI) is pleased to announce Thomas Courtade as the first recipient of its prestigious postdoctoral research fellowship. Thomas received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2007, his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from UCLA in 2008, and will finish his Ph.D. in June 2012 from UCLA under the supervision of Professor Rick Wesel. His current research interests are in the area of multiuser information theory, with a particular emphasis on distributed source coding and information exchange. He has also studied lossy compression when distortion is measured under logarithmic loss. This line of research illuminates relationships between Shannon-theoretic source coding and the theories of modeling, learning, data mining. Tom will work primarily with Professor Sergio Verdu of Princeton and Professor Tsachy Weissman of Stanford as he conducts an in-depth investigation on the connections between information theory and machine learning in the context of recent results on logarithmic loss.

Thomas\u2019 past accolades include being the recipient of the UCLA Dean\u2019s fellowship, the UCLA University fellowship, and the UCLA dissertation year fellowship. In recognition of his teaching efforts, Thomas was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award from the UCLA Department of Electrical Engineering in 2011. He is a member of the IEEE and SIAM.

The CSoI Postdoctoral Research Fellows program seeks to identify and groom intellectual leaders to shape the emerging field of Science of Information and its diverse applications. The program provides opportunities for dynamic individuals to interact with premier research groups and individuals worldwide, including researchers in the Center for Science of Information who have received the top awards in their fields (Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, Nobel Prize, Claude Shannon Award, and the Alan Turing Award). CSoI postdoctoral research fellows have unique opportunities to work in an enriching interdisciplinary environment, with significant potential for broad impact in terms of technology development, industry involvement, industry involvement, and educational initiatives.

The Center for Science of Information is an NSF Science and Technology Center headquartered at Purdue University with partners at Bryn Mawr, Howard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Texas A&M, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and the University of Illinois. The Center\u2019s mission is to advance science and technology through a new quantitative understanding of the representation, communication, and processing in biological, physical, social, and engineered systems.

Contact: Bob Brown, Managing Director, bobbrown@purdue.edu