BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk// X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Is the Gaussian distribution "\;Normal"\;?: Signal process ing with alpha-stable distributions - Dr. Ercan E Kuruoglu\, ISTI-CNR Pisa Italian National Council of Research and Max Planck Institute for Molecul ar Genetics\, Berlin DTSTART:20140220T140000Z DTEND:20140220T150000Z UID:TALK51020@talks.cam.ac.uk CONTACT:Prof. Ramji Venkataramanan DESCRIPTION:There are solid reasons for the popularity of Gaussian models. They are easy to deal with\, lead to linear equations\, and they have a s trong theoretical justification given by the Central Limit theorem. Howeve r\, many data\, man-made or natural\, exhibit characteristics too impulsiv e or skewed to be successfully accommodated by the Gaussian model. The wid e spread power laws in the nature\, in internet\, in linguistics\, biology are very well known. In this talk we will challenge the "Normality" of th e Gaussian distribution and will discuss the alpha‐stable distribution f amily which satisfies the generalised Central Limit Theorem. Alpha‐Stabl e distributions have received wide interest in the signal processing commu nity and became state of the art models for impulsive noise and internet t raffic in the last 20 years since the influential paper of Nikias and Shao in 1993. We will provide the fundamental theory and discuss the rich clas s of statistics this family enables us to work with including fractional o rder statistics\, log statistics and extreme value statistics. We will pre sent some application areas where alpha‐stable distributions had importa nt success such as internet traffic modelling\, SAR imaging\, computationa l biology\, astronomy\, etc. We will identify open problems which we hope will lead to fruitful discussion on further research on this family of dis tributions. \n\n\n*BIOGRAPHY*:\nErcan E. Kuruoglu was born in Ankara\, Tur key in 1969. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees both in Electrical and El ectronics Engineering at Bilkent University in 1991 and 1993 and the MPhil and PhD degrees in Information Engineering at the Camb ridge University\, in the Signal Processing Laboratory\, in 1995 and 1998 respectively. Upon graduation from Cambridge\, he joined the Xerox Researc h Center in Cambridge as a permanent member of the Collaborative Multimedi a Systems Group. In 2000\, he was in INRIA‐Sophia Antipolis as an ERCIM fellow. In 2002\, he joined ISTI‐CNR\, Pisa as a permanent member. Since 2006\, he is an Associate Professor and Senior Researcher. He is a r ecipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (2012‐2014) which allowed him to work in as a visiting scientist at the Department of Theoretical Biophysics\, Humboldt‐Universität zu Berlin in 2012 and Ma x‐Planck Institute for Molecular Biology in 2013-2014. He is the author of more than 100 peer reviewed publications and holds 5 US\, European and Japanese patents. His research interests are in statistical signal p rocessing and information and coding theory with applications in image processing\, computational biology\, telecommunications\, astronomy and geophysics.\n\n LOCATION:LR4\, Cambridge University Engineering Department END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR