Emerging Frontiers of Science of Information

中心名称：信息科学中心主任：W. Szpankowski，领导机构：普渡大学现代通信的基础和附属的万亿美元经济意外之财是由克劳德·香农于1948年奠定的，他介绍了数据中固有信息内容的一般数学理论，以及在存在噪声的情况下其可靠的通信。而香农?理论已经产生了深远的影响，它的应用超越了存储和点对点通信，例如，到互联网，提出了根本性的挑战，其中最令人烦恼的面临今天？美国科学家和工程师。拟议中的信息科学中心的总体愿景是发展一门新的信息科学，将通常与数据/信息相关的共同特征纳入其中，如空间、时间、结构、语义和上下文，而香农？年代的理论。这一愿景的实现需要一个中心层面的环境，能够在很长一段时间内集中大量（和多样化）研究人员的努力，研究这些至关重要的挑战，这些挑战可能会产生深远的社会影响和巨大的经济后果。在这一总体愿景的保护伞下，拟议的中心将探索以下基本问题：(i)建模复杂系统和信息流分析技术的发展（例如，理解达尔文选择）；（ii）复杂系统中信息子结构的量化和提取（例如，发现基因调控网络中的功能相关结构或社会网络中的模块化实体）；（iii）理解用于在复杂系统中通过定时和定位交换信息的时空编码（例如，构建更有效的AD hoc网络和理解神经元活动）；（iv）基于正式信息理论度量的数据驱动知识发现（例如，在非结构化存储库中查找语义相关信息）；(v)隐写术、数据混淆和隐藏作为鲁棒性机制（例如，开发用于监测和监视的安全系统）；（vi）发现不同自然系统中的冗余和容错原则（例如，理解擦除编码和分布式系统设计之间的相互作用）。拟议中的中心的智力优势包括它寻求维持的学生、学术和工业学者社区，它希望实现的理论进步，以及它希望提供的新见解和工具，以解释从生命科学到商业应用的无数不同系统。该中心的广泛影响超出了潜在的科学、社会和经济后果，并包括创造一个？活跃和繁荣的学生和学者社区？他们将培养下一代科学家和工程师，启发公众，并最终为下一次信息革命铺平道路。中心团队由40多名研究人员组成，其中许多人已经在与信息科学相关的多个研究领域取得了重大成就。中心团队是一个非常多元化的团队：它既有初级研究人员，也有高级研究人员，包括一些代表性不足的群体的成员。他们带来了所有重要研究领域的专业知识，包括计算机科学、化学、经济学、统计学、环境科学、信息论、生命科学和物理学。机构合作伙伴包括9所一流大学（普渡大学、布林莫尔大学、霍华德大学、麻省理工学院、普林斯顿大学、斯坦福大学、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学圣地亚哥分校和伊利诺伊大学圣地亚哥分校），其中两所大学的学生人数明显不足。学术机构由中心补充。美国安进、贝尔实验室、Configuersoft、谷歌、惠普、礼来、NEC、高通、雅虎等行业合作伙伴以及国际知名机构的研究人员。

Center Name: Center for Science of Information Center Director: W. Szpankowski, Lead Institution: Purdue University The foundations of modern communications and ancillary trillion plus dollar economic windfall were laid in 1948 by Claude Shannon who introduced a general mathematical theory of the inherent information content in data and its reliable communication in the presence of noise. While Shannon?s Theory has had a profound impact, its application beyond storage and point-to-point communication, e.g., to the Internet, poses fundamental challenges, among the most vexing facing today?s scientists and engineers. The overarching vision of the proposed Center for Science of Information is to develop a new science of information that incorporates common features generally associated with data/information, such as space, time, structure, semantics and context that are not addressed by Shannon?s Theory. The realization of this vision requires a center-level environment that can focus the efforts of a sizeable (and diverse) group of researchers, for a protracted period of time, on these critically important challenges, which could have far reaching societal impact and enormous economic ramifications. Under the umbrella of this overarching vision, the proposed center will explore the following fundamental issues: (i) modeling complex systems and development of analytical techniques for information flow (e.g., understanding Darwinian selection); (ii) quantification and extraction of informative substructures in complex systems (e.g., discovering functionally relevant structures in gene regulatory networks or modular entities in social networks); (iii) understanding of spatio-temporal coding used to exchange information through timing and localization in complex systems (e.g., building more efficient ad hoc networks and understanding neuronal activity); (iv) data-driven knowledge discovery based on formal information-theoretic measures (e.g., finding semantically relevant information in unstructured repositories); (v) steganography, data obfuscation and hiding as mechanisms for robustness (e.g., developing secure systems for monitoring and surveillance); and (vi) discovering principles of redundancy and fault tolerance in diverse natural systems (e.g., understanding the interplay between erasure coding and distributed system design). The intellectual merits of the proposed center include the community of students and academic and industrial scholars it seeks to sustain, the theoretical advances it hopes to achieve, and the novel insights and tools it hopes to provide to explicate a myriad of diverse systems, ranging from the life sciences through business applications. The broader impacts of this Center extend beyond the potential scientific, societal and economic ramifications and include the creation of an ?active and thriving community of students and scholars? who will train the next generation of scientists and engineers, enlighten the public, and ultimately pave the way for the next information revolution. The Center team is composed of over 40 investigators, many having already made significant accomplishments in multiple research areas relevant to the Science of Information. The Center team is a very diverse group: it has a mix of junior and senior researchers, including several members of underrepresented groups. They bring expertise in all essential areas of research, including Computer Science, Chemistry, Economics, Statistics, Environmental Science, Information Theory, Life Sciences, and Physics. The institutional partners include nine premier institutions (Purdue, Bryn Mawr, Howard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSD, and UIUC), two of which have significant underrepresented student populations. The academic institutions are complemented by the Center?s industrial partners (Amgen, Bell Labs, Configuersoft, Google, HP, Lilly, NEC, Qualcomm, and Yahoo) and by world-renowned researchers at international institutions.