Angela Yingjun Zhang

Title: Task-oriented Communications

Abstract: Task oriented communications, which extracts only task-relevant information for transmission, is envisioned to be a key enabler to alleviate the communication burden in next-generation wireless networks. Thanks to the recent advances in AI, deep neural networks (DNNs) has been introduced for task-relevant information extraction. Nonetheless, most existing work either overly simplifies the wireless channel as bit pipes or design the learning and communication modules separately with distinct objectives. Conventionally, the learning module targets accurate execution of specific tasks, while the communication module aims at throughput maximization, delay minimization, or bit error rate minimization. The inconsistency between the design objectives hinders the exploitation of the full benefits of task-oriented communications. In this talk, we advocate a unified task-oriented communication design, in which learning and communication share a common objective, i.e., the successful completion of the task. In particular, we base our design on a recently emerged concept of maximum coding rate reduction (MCR2), a white-box deep network structure.

Bio: Angela Yingjun Zhang received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She joined the Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005, where she is now a professor.

Prof. Zhang is now a Member-at-Large of IEEE ComSoc Board of Governors, a member of the Steering Committees of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Wireless Communication Letters, and IEEE SmartgridComm Conference. Previously, she served as a member of IEEE ComSoc Fellow Evaluation Standing Committee, the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, the Chair of the Executive Editor Committee of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and many years on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE JSAC special issues, IEEE IoT Journal special issues, and IEEE Communications Magazine special issues. Prof. Zhang has served on the Organizing Committees of many top conferences, such as IEEE GLOBECOM, ICC, VTC, SmartgridComm, etc. She was the Founding Chair of IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee of Smart Grid Communications.

Prof. Zhang is a co-recipient of 2021 and 2014 IEEE ComSoc Asia Pacific Outstanding Paper Awards, 2013 IEEE SmartgridComm Best Paper Award, and 2011 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award on Wireless Communications. As the only winner from engineering science, Prof. Zhang won the Hong Kong Young Scientist Award 2006, conferred by the Hong Kong Institute of Science.