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Faculty Profile

Toby Berger

Department: ECE

Title: Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor in Engineering Emeritus

Personal Web Site:
http://www.ece.virginia.edu/profiles.php?ID=110

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Degrees earned:
 B.S. Yale 1962
 M.S. Harvard 1962
 Ph.D. Harvard 1968

Address:
Office:
 Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Virginia
Thornton Hall - C323
 Charlottesville, VA, 22904-4743

Office Phone: (434) 243-2075

Biography:

B.S. (Yale), M.S. and Ph.D. (Harvard) 1962-68: Research interests include information theory, random fields, communication networks, video compression, signature verification, bioinformation theory, and coherent signal processing.

Research interests:

I conduct and supervise research in diverse disciplines including information theory, random fields, communication networks, video compression, signature verification, and coherent signal processing. I am particularly interested in situations in which information generated at several different locations must be transmitted over a network of communication links whose capacity is limited.

We have studied throughput versus delay tradeoffs and robust design techniques in packet communication systems. Other problems concern applying multiterminal rate-distortion theory and multiterminal decision theory to situations in which many remote, correlated sources are connected to a common processor via separate communication links. This work is of significance for multisite signal-processing applications such as interferometry, seismology, and emitter location. We have contributed to the problem of optimum diversity coding, known also as the multiple descriptions problem, in several cases obtaining exact results for the ultimate capabilities of such systems.

The subject of random fields, which is under intense investigation in mathematics and physics, is being studied from the viewpoint of information theory. Analysis, synthesis, simulation, and encoding of random fields are all under investigation. A rigorous basis has been provided by extending the fundamental block and sliding-block coding theorems for sources and channels to situations characterized by multidimensional parameters. Work on rate-distortion theory for non-Gaussian random fields has included the establishment of a critical distortion phenomenon for the Ising model in two dimensions. We are exploring ties with statistical physics, including the information-theoretic implications of phase-transition phenomena. In particular, we have extended the Shannon McMillan theorem to stationary and ergodic fields on trees and have determined the cardinality of phase transition of symmetric fields on closed trees...