Lara Dolecek

Coordinates:

Office: 32-D632

Email: dolecek @ mit.edu

Phone: (617) 324-0645

Postal address: 77 Massachusetts Avenue, LIDS, 32-D632, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139

I am presently a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), EECS Dept. at MIT where I collaborate with Prof. Devavrat Shah.

I was previously affiliated with Wireless Foundations, EECS Dept., UC Berkeley. My doctoral dissertation was supervised by Prof. Venkat Anantharam. My other collaborators include Prof. Martin Wainwright, Prof. Borivoje Nikolic, Zhengya Zhang and Pamela Lee.

Education:

• Ph.D. in EECS, UC Berkeley,  2007. David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize for the most outstanding doctoral research in EECS, UC Berkeley, 2007.
• M.A. in Statistics, UC Berkeley, 2007.
• M.S. in EECS, UC Berkeley, 2004.
• B.S. in EECS, UC Berkeley, with Honors.

My research interests include various aspects of communications, coding, information and number theory, statistical methods and signal processing. Some specific applications are in data storage, wireless communications, VLSI implementations, and more recently, social networks.

Publications by topic:

Communication over channels with additive and synchronization errors (pubs. [1] through [7])

Contributions include algebraic-based solutions for overcoming synchronization errors of some well-known FEC codes (e.g. Reed-Muller), novel number theoretic construction of repetition error correcting codes, and the development of suitable low complexity decoding algorithms.

Iterative decoding of finite length LDPC codes (pubs. [8] through [14])

Contributions include systematic analytical and statistical methods for the evaluation of LDPC code performance. Introduction of the combinatorial object termed absorbing set, which governs the low BER performance of LDPC codes under iterative decoding. Development of novel high-throughput decoder architectures based on absorbing sets.

Social networks (pubs. [15] and [16])

Contributions include characterization of influence and influential agents in large social networks in terms of networks dynamics and fundamental structural properties of underlying graphical models.

1. L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam, "Prefixing Method for Correcting Repetition Errors", IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2008), Toronto, Canada, July 2008.
2. L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam, "On Subsets of Binary Strings Immune to Multiple Repetitions", IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2007), Nice, France, June 2007, pp. 1691-1695.
3. L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam," Using Reed-Muller codes in channels with synchronization and substitution errors",  IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 53 (4), pp. 1430 - 1443, April 2007.
   • Technical report version: L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam," Using Reed-Muller codes in channels with synchronization and substitution errors", Report No. EECS-2006-44, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.
4. L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam, "On Communication over Channels with Varying Sampling Rate", Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA), UC San Diego, La Jolla, Jan.-Feb. 2007.
5. L. Dolecek and  V. Anantharam, " A synchronization technique for array-based LDPC codes in channels with varying sampling rate ", IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2006), Seattle, WA, July 2006, pp. 2057 - 2061.
   • Longer technical report version: L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam, "On array-based LDPC codes in channels with varying sampling rate", Report No. EECS-2006-7, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.
6. L. Dolecek, " On structural properties of Reed-Muller codes and their use in channels with synchronization and substitution errors", Report No. EECS-2006-43, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.
7. L. Dolecek and V. Anantharam, "Run-length properties of a Reed-Muller RM(1,m) code with applications in channels with at most one synchronization error", 42nd Allerton Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing, Champaign, Illinois, 29 Sep - 01 Oct. 2004, pp. 270 -279.
   •  Longer version: L. Dolecek, "Runlength properties of a Reed-Muller (1,m) code with applications in channels with at most one synchronization error", Master's thesis, UC Berkeley

    

8. L. Dolecek, Z. Zhang, V. Anantharam, M. Wainwright, and B. Nikolic, "Analysis of Absorbing Sets and Fully Absorbing Sets for Array-Based LDPC Codes", submitted for journal publication, 2008.
9. P. Lee, L. Dolecek, Z. Zhang, V. Anantharam, B. Nikolic and M. Wainwright, "Error Floors in LDPC Codes: Fast Simulation, Bounds and Hardware Emulation", IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2008), Toronto, Canada, July 2008.
10. Z. Zhang, L. Dolecek, B. Nikolic, V. Anantharam and  M. Wainwright, "Design of LDPC Decoders for Low Bit Error Rate Performance'', submitted for journal publication, 2008.
11. L. Dolecek, Z. Zhang, M. J. Wainwright, V. Anantharam, B. Nikolic, "Evaluation of the low frame error rate performance of LDPC codes using importance sampling," IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Lake Tahoe CA, September 2007, pp. 202 - 207.
12. L. Dolecek, Z. Zhang, V. Anantharam, M. Wainwright, and B. Nikolic, " Analysis of Absorbing Sets for Array-Based LDPC Codes ",  IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Glasgow, United Kingdom, June 2007, pp. 6261-6268.
13. Z. Zhang, L. Dolecek, V. Anantharam, M. Wainwright, and B. Nikolic," Quantization Effects in Low-Density Parity-Check Decoders",  IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Glasgow, United Kingdom, June 2007, pp. 6231-6237.
14.  Z. Zhang, L. Dolecek, B. Nikolic, V. Anantharam and  M. Wainwright, " Investigation of error floors of a structured low-density parity-check code by hardware simulation",  IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM 2006), San Francisco, Nov. - Dec. 2006, Gen03-6, pp. 1-6. Best paper award finalist.

     

15. L. Dolecek and D. Shah, "Social Networks With(out) Influential Agents", to be presented at GAMES 2008, Evanston, Illinois, July, 2008.
16. L. Dolecek and D. Shah, "Influence in a Society: Interplay Between Information Dynamics and Network Structure", submitted for publication, 2008.
     

Teaching: In Spring 2006, I was a graduate student instructor for the Introduction to Digital Communications class (EE121).

Reading group: At UC Berkeley, I participated in the organization of a  reading group on coding theory, algorithms, geometry and concentration.   The schedule and topics covered can be found here.