The IEEE European School of Information Theory (ESIT) is an annual educational event, organized by the IEEE Information Theory Society (ITSoc), for graduate students, postdocs and researchers from institutes throughout Europe and beyond.

The objective of the school is to provide participants with the opportunity (i) to learn from distinguished lecturers by attending long-format tutorials, (ii) to present their own work to obtain feedback and to start up collaborations, (iii) to hear about applications of information theory in industry, and (iv) to participate in a stimulating and inviting forum of scientists.

The entire schedule for ESIT 2023 can be found here: ‌ESIT 2023 Schedule (PDF, 20kB) 

The 2023 School 

School dates: The School starts on Monday 17 July and ends on Friday 21 July 

School program: The program includes a mix of tutorials (4 one-hour lectures) and seminars (1-hour lectures) by experts in Information Theory on topics of current interest in Information Theory and affiliated fields (Coding Theory, Machine Learning, Communications, Inference, Data Science and Applied Probability). 

The list of speakers is: 

4-hour Tutorial speakers 

Tobias Koch - From the law of large numbers to the saddlepoint expansion and their application to channel coding theorems

Rashmi Vinayak - Coding theory for distributed systems

Mary Wootters - List-Decoding and List-Recovery in Error Correcting Codes

Spotlight talks

András György - (1) Transfer Learning with Pretrained Classifiers, (2) Zeroth order (stochastic) convex optimization

Varun Jog - The sample complexity of simple binary hypothesis testing

Po-Ling Loh - Robust empirical risk minimization via Newton's method

Marco Mondelli - (1) Inference in High Dimensions for (Mixed) Generalized Linear Models: the Linear, the Spectral and the Approximate, (2) Understanding Gradient Descent for Over-parameterised Deep Neural Networks: Insights from Mean-Field Theory and the Neural Tangent Kernel

Michèle Wigger - Information-Theoretic Limits of Distributed Detection Systems

Abstract details can be found here: ESIT 2023 Abstracts (PDF, 1,830kB)

School location: The School will be held in Bristol - a vibrant and buzzing city, and the largest in the southwest of England. A lively art scene, rich cultural diversity and a fascinating history are all hallmarks of the city’s character.  

School venue: The 2023 School is hosted by the School of Mathematics, University of Bristol – and will be held at the historic Fry Building. The newly refurbished building offers a world class facility for mathematics research and teaching. 

Registration 

Registration for this event has now closed, however if there are specific talks that you are interested in attending, please feel free to join us. Please note that the social activities and daily refreshments are only available to those who have previously registered and who have paid the registratio fee.

Pricing 

IT Society Member - £60.00 

IEEE Member - £80.00 

Non-IEEE Member – £110.00 

We encourage participants to join IEEE and the Information Theory Society (by following this link) prior to registering for ESIT 2023.

Note that for postgraduate/undergraduate students this can result in overall savings, since the annual cost of an IEEE student membership for UK and most European residents is 27 USD, and the annual cost of IT Society membership for IEEE members is 1 USD

Accommodation

We have secured a limited number of heavily subsidised rooms with our Goldney Hall student accommodation. Please note that these rooms are now fully booked.

There will be a total cost of £50 for 5 nights' accommodation from Sunday 16th to Friday 21st July. This must be booked at the time of registration. 

If you would prefer to book accommodation elsewhere, you can find information about local hotels and accommodation on the Visit Bristol website.

Travel support 

We may be able to provide some travel support for attendees – this will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  

To be considered, please register first for the school, and then complete the following form.   

Invitation Letters 

If you require an invitation letter, please register first for the school via our online shop. 

As soon as you have registered, please get in touch with us via esit-2023@bristol.ac.uk and send us the following information: 

Travel  

Bristol is easily accessible with good road, rail, bus, coach and air links. You can find information on all travel options available via the following link.   

Cancellation Policy 

Organisers

Sidharth Jaggi

Oliver Johnson

Sponsors 

Thank you to our sponsors:  

• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 
• School of Mathematics, University of Bristol
• HUAWEI 
• LMS 
• Heilbronn Institute of Mathematical Research