Natasha Devroye is a Belgian and Canadian

information theorist Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally) of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natur ...

known for her research on the

channel capacity Channel capacity, in electrical engineering, computer science, and information theory, is the theoretical maximum rate at which information can be reliably transmitted over a communication channel. Following the terms of the noisy-channel coding ...

cognitive radio A cognitive radio (CR) is a radio that can be programmed and configured dynamically to use the best channels in its vicinity to avoid user interference and congestion. Such a radio automatically detects available channels, then accordingly change ...

communications. She is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the

University of Illinois Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the Universi ...

Education and career

Devroye grew up in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. Attracted to both mathematics and electrical engineering in high school, she chose to study engineering because of its higher admission standards at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

, where she graduated in 2002. At McGill, she specialized in communications, with a bachelor's thesis supervised by Fabrice Labeau. She went to

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

for graduate study in engineering, completing her Ph.D. in 2007 with the dissertation ''Information Theoretic Limits of Cognition and Cooperation in Wireless Networks'' supervised by Vahid Tarokh. After another year of postdoctoral research at Harvard, she joined the University of Illinois Chicago as an assistant professor in 2009. She was promoted to associate professor in 2015 and full professor in 2020.

Recognition

Devroye was elected as an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

, in the 2023 class of fellows, "for fundamental contributions to the theoretical understanding of cognitive, two-way, and relay networks".

Personal life

Devroye is the daughter of Montreal-based Belgian computer scientist and mathematician

Luc Devroye Luc P. Devroye is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician and a James McGill Professor in the School of Computer Science of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Devroye wrote around 300 mathematical articles, mostly on probabi ...

. Her husband, Jakob Eriksson, is a computer scientist at the University of Illinois Chicago.

References

External links

Devroye lab
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Devroye, Natasha Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Information theorists Belgian electrical engineers Belgian women academics Canadian electrical engineers 21st-century Canadian engineers Canadian women engineers Women electrical engineers McGill University alumni Harvard University alumni University of Illinois Chicago faculty Fellows of the IEEE Belgian women engineers 21st-century Canadian women engineers 20th-century women engineers 20th-century Belgian engineers 20th-century Belgian women scientists 21st-century women engineers 21st-century Belgian engineers 21st-century Belgian women scientists