Nan Ma

I am a PhD student and a Research Assistant in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. I am a member of the Information Systems and Sciences Lab (ISS) and the Center for Information and SYstems Engineering (CISE) at Boston University. My PhD advisor of prof. Prakash Ishwar.

My CV can be found here.

I received my Bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in July 2002. I also got my Master's degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in Jan. 2005. Since 2005 I became a PhD student in the Department of ECE at Boston University.

I am currently working on Network Information Theory problems related to distributed data processing and communication which are motivated by emerging applications such as wireless sensor networks, multi-core GPUs, and distributed and cloud computing. In my doctoral dissertation entitled “Interactive Source Coding for Function Computation in Networks”, I comprehensively studied the problem of two-way interactive computation where messages are allowed to be sent back and forth between the terminals. In particular, my research has exposed the great benefits of interaction in network function computation problems. I introduced a new dimension for asymptotic analysis:interaction using an infinite number of infinitesimal-rate messages. The infinite-message limit of the minimum sum-rate functional has been characterized in terms of certain convex-geometric properties. An iterative algorithm was provided to efficiently evaluate the minimum sum-rate functional. I have answered a long-standing question raised by Kaspi in 1985 by providing the first example for which two messages strictly improves the performance of the traditional one-message Wyner-Ziv lossy source coding scheme.

In my doctoral and master’s research I have also worked on problems in optical communication systems, field reconstruction problems in sensor networks and sequential coding problems motivated by video coding applications. In the near term I plan to develop a strong research program in network information theory with a focus on interactive network function computation and coding. In the long term I am keen to explore connections to biologically inspired computing and communication networks. My technical interests include Communications, Information Theory, Signal Processing, Data/Sensor Networks, and Image and Video Processing.

I am passionate about explaining the intuition behind the key concepts in electrical engineering using visual illustrations. For example, I once wrote a fantasy story about a small town where the residents are functions. The story intuitively explains the important properties of Fourier transform, sampling, and filtering. As another example, I have also created a computer game of the 2D version of the Rubik’s Cube to illustrate the principles of group theory. I have made numerous paper models to study the shape
of complicated 3D objects.

 

 

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