Andrew J. Viterbi Distinguished Lecture

The 2007 Viterbi Lecture is hosted by the USC Ming Hsieh Department of
Electrical Engineering and Viterbi School of Engineering"Learning to Teach the Viterbi Algorithm"Prof. Robert J. McElieceCalifornia Institute of TechnologyThursday March 22, 2007Reception: 4:00-5:00PMLecture: 5:00-6:15PMGerontology AuditoriumAbstract: One of Andrew Viterbi's most important contributions to modern technology is the celebrated Viterbi Algorithm, which is the cornerstone of modern coding theory. I have taught the Viterbi Algorithm to many generations of Caltech students using a variety of pedagogical devices, including string models, multilevel transparencies, and computer animations. In this talk I will discuss these methods as well as others, and what I have learned by teaching the Viterbi Algorithm.Bio:Robert J. McEliece is currently the Allen E. Puckett Professor and Professor of Electrical Engineering, at the California Institute of Technology. He has also been a regular consultant at the Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At JPL Dr. McEliece has contributed to the design and analysis of numerous coded interplanetary telecommunication systems, for example the Golay coded non-imaging system for the Voyager spacecraft, and the Big Viterbi Decoder, which has been used by the Galileo, Pathfinder, Cassini, and Mars Rover missions. As a faculty member at Caltech, he has five times won awards for excellence in teaching, and mentored more than 30 Ph.D. students. From 1990-1999, he served as Executive Officer for Electrical Engineering, and under his leadership Caltech's small (15 FTE) EE Department rose to rank 5th nationally. Dr. McEliece is the author of three textbooks and more than 250 research articles, jointly with more than 100 coauthors. Among his research accomplishments are "McEliece's Theorem," on weight divisibility in cyclic codes, the "JPL Bound" (jointly with Eugene Rodemich, Howard Rumsey, and Lloyd Welch), which has been the world record-holder in the basic combinatorial problem of coding since 1977, and which was selected for a Information Theory Society Golden Jubilee Award in 1998, the ``McEliece public-key cryptosystem,'' which has withstood the attacks of cryptanalysts for more than 25 years, and "repeat-accumulate codes" (jointly with Dariush Divsalar and Hui Jin), which bridge the gap between turbo-codes and LDPC codes. He won the 1998 Leonard G. Abraham Prize for his paper (joint with David MacKay and Jung-fu Cheng) "Turbo decoding as an instance of Pearl's belief propagation algorithm," and was awarded an IEEE Third Millenium Medal in 2000. In 2004 he was awarded the IEEE Information Theory Society's Shannon Prize. Dr. McEliece is a member of the American Mathematical Society, a Fellow of the IEEE, a past president of the IEEE Information Theory Society, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Rosine Sarafian