IZS 2026 Conference Program

Wednesday, February 25

07:30 Registration desk opens
08:15 Opening address
08:20 – 09:20   Keynote Lecture by Jonas Peters
Coffee break
09:50 – 11:30 Session 1: Coding Theory
Lunch break
13:20 – 14:40 Session 2: Capacity and Error Rate
Coffee break
15:10 – 16:30 Session 3: Topics in Network Information Theory
Short break
16:40 – 17:20 Session 4: Topics in Networks and Scheduling

Thursday, February 26

08:20 – 09:20   Keynote Lecture by Igal Sason
Coffee break
09:50 – 11:30 Session 5: Source Coding and Entropy
Lunch break
13:20 – 15:00 Session 6: Classical and Quantum Communication
Coffee break
15:30 – 16:30 Session 7: From Theory to Wireless (FTW)
18:30 – end Conference Banquet (more information)

Friday, February 27

08:20 – 09:20   Keynote Lecture by Pascal Vontobel
Coffee break
09:50 – 11:30 Session 8: Molecular and Biological Information Theory
Lunch break
13:20 – 14:40 Session 9: Physically-Consistent Communication Theory
Coffee break
15:10 – 16:30 Session 10: Various Topics in Information Theory

All talks are 20 min.

Recent-Results Posters

Keynote Lecture (Wednesday 08:20 – 09:20)

  • An Introduction to Causality and some Applications
    Jonas Peters (ETH Zurich)

Session 1: Coding Theory (Wednesday 09:50 – 11:30)
Invited Session by Joachim Rosenthal (University of Zurich)

  • How close are we to Solving Code Equivalence
    Violetta Weger
  • Coding for Channels with Correlated Synchronization Errors
    Roni Con, João Ribeiro
  • Linear Exact Repair Schemes for Evaluation Codes
    Hiram H. López, Gretchen L. Matthews
  • Covert Channels from Biased LLMs
    Ryan Gabrys
  • The Coded Coupons Collector's Problem
    Daniella Bar-Lev

Session 2: Capacity and Error Rate (Wednesday 13:20 – 14:40)
Chaired by Chandra Nair (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

  • Information Density of DNA Storage in the Short Molecule Regime
    Ran Tamir, Nir Weinberger, Albert Guillén i Fàbregas
  • The Capacity of Information-Unstable Channels with Rate-Limited Help at the Decoder
    Sergey Loyka, Charalambos D. Charalambous
  • Two-Class Joint Source-Channel Coding: Expurgated Exponents with i.i.d. Distributions
    Seyed AmirPouya Moeini, Albert Guillén i Fàbregas
  • On the Error Rate of Binary BCH Codes under Error-and-erasure Decoding
    Sisi Miao, Jonathan Mandelbaum, Holger Jäkel, Laurent Schmalen

Session 3: Topics in Network Information Theory (Wednesday 15:10 – 16:30)
Invited Session by Yossef Steinberg (Technion — Israel Institute of Technology)

  • A Summary of "Recent" Results on the Gaussian Z-Interference Channel
    Chandra Nair
  • Byzantine Distributed Function Computation
    Vinod M. Prabhakaran
  • Cost Constraints Revisited
    Adeel Mahmood, Aaron Wagner
  • Joint Source-Channel Coding Under a Covertness Constraint
    Abdelaziz Bounhar, Deniz Gündüz, Michèle Wigger

Session 4: Topics in Networks and Scheduling (Wednesday 16:40 – 17:20)
Chaired by Albert Guillén i Fàbregas (University of Cambridge)

  • Joint Scheduling and Multiflow Maximization in Wireless Networks
    Yanxiao Liu, Shenghao Yang, Cheuk Ting Li
  • On the Role of Early-Termination for Age of Information in Tree-Based Random Access Protocols
    Andrea Munari, Čedomir Stefanović

Keynote Lecture (Thursday 08:20 – 09:20)

  • Shannon Capacity of Graphs: Classical Results, Advances, and Open Problems
    Igal Sason (Technion — Israel Institute of Technology)

Session 5: Source Coding and Entropy (Thursday 09:50 – 11:30)
Chaired by Berhard Geiger (Know Center Research GmbH)

  • Single-shot lossy compression: mutual information bounds
    Victoria Kostina
  • Source Coding with Side Information: A Dual-Domain Expurgated Error Exponent
    Mehdi Dabirnia, Hamdi Joudeh, Albert Guillén i Fàbregas
  • Universal Class-Based Block Source Coding for Discrete Memoryless Sources
    Mehdi Dabirnia, Albert Guillén i Fàbregas, Alfonso Martinez
  • A complete characterisation of conditional entropy
    Roberto Rubboli, Erkka Haapasalo, Marco Tomamichel
  • The entropy power inequality without assumptions: Equality and stability
    Lampros Gavalakis, Ioannis Kontoyiannis

Session 6: Classical and Quantum Communication (Thursday 13:20 – 15:00)
Chaired by Michèle Wigger (Télécom Paris)

  • Precoded Polar Product Decoder Based on Soft-Output SCL Decoding and Maximization of Generalized Mutual Information
    Nicolás Alvarez Prado, Andreas Straßhofer
  • Belief Propagation Decoding of Tensor-Based Modulation for Unsourced Random Access
    Sweta Suresh, Maxime Guillaud
  • An Extension of Enumerative Sphere Shaping for Arbitrary Channel Input Distributions
    Frederik Ritter, Andrej Rode, Laurent Schmalen
  • Coset Shaping for Coded Modulation
    Irina Bocharova, Maiara F. Bollauf, Boris Kudryashov
  • Classical Feedback in a Quantum Network
    Elina Levi, Uzi Pereg

Session 7: From Theory to Wireless (FTW) (Thursday 15:30 – 16:30)
Invited Session by Jossy Sayir (University of Cambridge)

  • Transceiver Architectures for Multi-Antenna Towards In-Band Shift Keying
    Levi Bohnacker, Ralf Müller, Wolfgang Gerstacker
  • Towards Practical Massive Random Access
    Maxime Guillaud
  • Teaching freshers information theory: Shannon's theorem for linear codes on the BEC
    Jossy Sayir

Keynote Lecture (Friday 08:20 – 09:20)

  • On Typical Permutations
    Pascal Vontobel (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Session 8: Molecular and Biological Information Theory (Friday 09:50 – 11:30)
Invited Session by Andrew Eckford (York University, Canada)

  • The Philosophy and Science of Biological Information Theory: A Brief Overview and Recent Results
    Andrew W. Eckford
  • When Equilibrium Falls Silent: Nonequilibrium as the Essence of Molecular Communication
    Nunzio Tuccitto, Maximilian Schäfer
  • Limits of Information Flow Between Classically Interacting Particles
    Miles Miller-Dickson, Christopher Rose
  • Quantifying the Flow of Information
    Pieter Rein ten Wolde
  • Bits and Pieces Underlying Living Systems: On Subjective Information and Beyond
    Tyler S. Barker, Peter J. Thomas, Alexander S. Moffett, Andrew W. Eckford, Massimiliano Pierobon

Session 9: Physically-Consistent Communication Theory (Friday 13:20 – 14:40)
Invited Session by Christoph Studer (ETH Zurich)

  • Multi-antenna Systems and Circuit Theory
    Josef A. Nossek, Michael Joham
  • Over-The-Air Extreme Learning Machines with XL Reception via Nonlinear Cascaded Metasurfaces
    Kyriakos Stylianopoulos, Mattia Fabiani, Giulia Torcolacci, Davide Dardari, George C. Alexandropoulos
  • Microwave Linear Analog Computer for Communications and Signal Processing
    Matteo Nerini, Bruno Clerckx
  • On the Complexity of Electromagnetic Far-Field Modeling
    Torben Kölle, Alexander Stutz-Tirri, Christoph Studer

Session 10: Various Topics in Information Theory (Friday 15:10 – 16:30)
Chaired by Ligong Wang (ETH Zurich)

  • A Glimpse at Covert Portfolios
    Ahmet Batuhan Sancak, Robert Graczyk, Nicolas Le Gouic, Stefan M. Moser
  • Universal Outlier Hypothesis Testing via Mean- and Median-Based Tests
    Berhard C. Geiger, Tobias Koch, Josipa Mihaljević, Maximilian Toller
  • Quaternionic MMSE Estimation and Iterative Algorithms for Quaternionic Compressed Sensing
    Robert F.H. Fischer, Elena Sterk
  • New Achievability Schemes for Distributed Computing of Linearly Separable Functions
    Elizabath Peter, K. K. Krishnan Namboodiri, Derya Malak, Petros Elia

Recent-Result Posters

The posters will be on display throughout the day, with the authors available for discussion during the morning and afternoon coffee breaks.


Wednesday:

  • The ML Expurgated Error Exponent is Not Universally Achievable
    Seyed AmirPouya Moeini (University of Cambridge, UK)
    Marco Dalai (University of Brescia, Italy)
    Albert Guillén i Fàbregas (University of Cambridge, UK)
  • A Unified Framework for Generalization Bounds via Change of Measure Inequalities
    Yanxiao Liu (Imperial College London, UK)
    Yijun Fan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
    Deniz Gündüz (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Achievable Rates for the Gaussian Gilbert-Elliott Channel
    Yutong Han (Technical University of Munich, Germany)
    Albert Guillén i Fàbregas (University of Cambridge, UK)

Thursday:

  • Geometric Analysis of Blind User Identification for Massive MIMO Networks
    Levi Bohnacker (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
    Ralf Müller (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
  • Deviation Inequalities for Rényi Divergence Estimators
    Sreejith Sreekumar (L2S, Centralesupelec, CNRS, France)
    Kengo Kato (Cornell University, New York, USA)
  • Optimal Robot Path Planning using Voronoi-based Discrete Optimization with Collision Avoidance and Topography Maps
    Dimitris Milioris (Nokia Bell Labs, Massy, France)

Friday:

  • Distortion Function from the Cell’s Perspective in Chemotaxis
    Fardad Vakilipoor (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
    Johannes Konrad (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
    Maximilian Schäfer (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
  • On Spectral Identifiability Conditions for Signals with Two-Sided Samples
    Mert Kayaalp (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Lugano, Switzerland)
    Oleg Szehr (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Lugano, Switzerland)

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