The Department of Electrical Engineering

My research in information theory is largely focused on the fundamental limits of communication in multiuser settings. In addition to moving information around in the classical sense, some alternative questions arise when you consider using information to coordinate actions in a control setting. The mathematical tools needed to characterize the limits of compression in these settings are related to rate-distortion theory and require additional novel concepts as well.

I also have interest in several other topics of research, including:

- Multiuser information theory
- Communication for control
- Knowledge from the masses (i.e., Wikipedia)
- Investment (portfolio) theory
- Machine learning
- Statistical physics, random algorithms, belief propagation
- Audio processing

I received my Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Brigham Young University and earned both a Master's and Ph.D. from Stanford University. After taste-testing the broad field of electrical engineering, my curiosity finally led me to research information theory with Thomas Cover, my dissertation advisor. I received honors as a graduate student for my performance on the qualifying exam and for my efforts as a teaching assistant. In 2008, at the International Symposium on Information Theory, I received a student paper award for my unorthodox, independently authored work on communication requirements for generating correlated random variables. That work has led to various avenues of research.