Research

Research Projects
Research Thoughts

My current research interests lie in the general areas of

Distributed computing
Information theory
Coding theory
Statistical inference and graphical models

My Google Scholar Profile

Ph.D. Thesis

Da Wang. Computing with Unreliable Resources: Design, Analysis and Algorithms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2014 [ MIT Dspace, Thesis defense slides (PDF) ]
Committee members: Gregory Wornell (advisor), Yury Polyanskiy, Devavrat Shah.
Awards/Fellowships/Scholarships:
- Wellington and Irene Loh Fund Fellowship (2014)
- 2011 Claude E. Shannon Research Assistantship
- NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship: Doctoral level (2010 -- 2013)

S.M. Thesis

Da Wang. Distinguishing Codes from Noise: Fundamental Limits and Applications to Sparse Communication, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2010 [ MIT Dspace, MIT EECS Masterworks 2010 presentation (PDF), School of Information Theory 2010 presentation (PDF), ]
Advisor: Gregory Wornell.
Awards/Fellowships/Scholarships:
- MIT Hewlett Packard Fellowship (2009)
- NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship: Master level (2009 -- 2010)
- MIT Irwin M. Jacobs and Joan K. Jacobs Presidential Fellowship (2008)

Research Projects

Compression in the Space of Permutations
Efficient Task Replication in Large-scale Parallel Computing
Reliable Circuit Design with Unreliable Components
The Dispersion of Joint Source Channel Coding
Distinguishing Codes from Noise
Compression with Local Access and Editing
Robust Network Coding in the Presence of Adversaries
Webpage Prefetching in Heterogeneous Wireless Systems

Compression in the Space of Permutations

Joint work with Arya Mazumdar and Gregory Wornell.

Publications and talks:

Da Wang, Arya Mazumdar and Gregory Wornell. Compression in the Space of Permutations, IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, vol. 61, no. 12, pp. 6417-6431, Dec. 2015 [ IEEExplore, arXiv preprint ]
Da Wang, Arya Mazumdar and Gregory Wornell. Lossy Compression of Permutations, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Honolulu, HI, 2014 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]
Da Wang, Arya Mazumdar and Gregory Wornell. The Lossy Compression of Ranking Data (invited talk), presented at 48th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), Princeton, NJ, 2014
Da Wang, Arya Mazumdar and Gregory Wornell. A Rate-Distortion Theory for Permutation Spaces, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Istanbul, Turkey, 2013 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]

Efficient Task Replication in Large-scale Parallel Computing

Joint work with Gauri Joshi and Gregory Wornell.

Publications:

Da Wang, Gauri Joshi and Gregory Wornell. Using Straggler Replication to Reduce Latency in Large-scale Parallel Computing,
- presented at ACM Sigmetrics Distributed Cloud Computing Workshop (DCC 2015), Portland, OR, 2015
- published in ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 7-11, Dec. 2015
[ ACM Digital Library, Extended version on arXiv ]
Da Wang, Gauri Joshi and Gregory Wornell. Efficient Task Replication for Fast Response Times in Parallel Computation, Proc. ACM Sigmetrics, Austin, TX, 2014 [ ACM Digital Library, arXiv preprint ]

Reliable Circuit Design with Unreliable Components

Joint work with Jennifer Tang, Yury Polyanskiy and Gregory Wornell.

Publications:

Da Wang, Yury Polyanskiy and Gregory Wornell. Scalar Quantization With Noisy Partitions and its Application to Flash ADC Design, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Honolulu, HI, 2014 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]
Jennifer Tang, Da Wang, Yury Polyanskiy and Gregory Wornell. Defect Tolerance: Fundamental Limits and Examples, accepted to IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Barcelona, Spain, 2016 [ Preprint of extended version ]

The Dispersion of Joint Source Channel Coding

Joint work with Amir Ingber and Yuval Kochman.

Publications:

Da Wang, Amir Ingber and Yuval Kochman. A Strong Converse for Joint Source-Channel Coding, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Cambridge, MA, 2012 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]
Amir Ingber, Da Wang, and Yuval Kochman. Dispersion Theorems via Second Order Analysis of Functions of Distributions, in Proceedings of 46th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS) , Princeton, NJ, 2012 [ IEEExplore ]
Da Wang, Amir Ingber and Yuval Kochman. The Dispersion of Joint Source-Channel Coding, in Proceedings of 49th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, Monticello, IL, 2011. [ IEEExplore, Extended version on arXiv ]

Distinguishing Codes from Noise

Joint work with Venkat Chandar, Sae-Young Chung, and Gregory Wornell.

Publications:

Da Wang, Venkat Chandar, Sae-Young Chung and Gregory W. Wornell. On Reliability Functions for Single-Message Unequal Error Protection, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Cambridge, MA, 2012 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]
Da Wang, Venkat Chandar, Sae-Young Chung and Gregory W. Wornell. Error Exponents in Asynchronous Communication, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), St. Petersburg, Russia, 2011 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF), Slides (PDF) ]

Compression with Local Access and Editing

Joint work with Hongchao Zhou and Gregory Wornell.

Publication:

Hongchao Zhou, Da Wang and Gregory Wornell. A Simple Class of Efficient Compression Schemes Supporting Local Access and Editing, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT), Honolulu, HI, 2014 [ IEEExplore, Paper (PDF) ]

Robust Network Coding in the Presence of Adversaries

Joint work with Danilo Silva and Frank Kschischang, with support from NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award (2007).

Publications:

Da Wang, Danilo Silva and Frank R. Kschischang. Robust Network Coding in the Presence of Untrusted Nodes, IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, vol. 56, no. 9, pp. 4532-4538, Sept. 2010. [ IEEExplore , Paper (PDF) ]
Da Wang, Danilo Silva and Frank R. Kschischang. Constricting the Adversary: a Broadcast Transformation for Network Coding, in Proceedings of 45th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, Monticello, IL, 2007. [ Paper (PDF) ]

Webpage Prefetching in Heterogeneous Wireless Systems

Joint work with Ben Liang and Stephen Drew, with support from NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award (2005).

Publication:

Ben Liang, Stephen Drew and Da Wang, Performance of Multiuser Network-aware Prefetching in Heterogeneous Wireless Systems, Wireless Networks, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 99-110, 2009. [ SpringerLink , Paper (PDF) ]

Research Thoughts

What is good research?

In 2013 I (with Hye Won Chung, Mina Karzand and John Sun) participated in the 2013 Information Theory Society Student Video Competition by interviewing two distinguished information theorists at MIT, Professor Robert Gallager and Professor David Forney. Please see this page for the entry video and the accompanying interview transcripts.

You may find the following interviews interesting as well.

Early days of statistical signal processing and communication at MIT RLE

An interesting article about my academic ancestor:

The Lee-Wiener Legacy from the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

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