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Dror Baron

Dror Baron


Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North Carolina State University

Biographical Sketch and Contact Information

Dror Baron received the B.Sc. (summa cum laude) and M.Sc. degrees from the Technion – Israel Institue of Technology, Haifa, Israel, in 1997 and 1999, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003, all in electrical engineering.

From 1997 to 1999, he was a Modem Designer at Witcom Ltd. From 1999 to 2003, he was a Research Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2003. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, Houston, TX. From 2007 to 2008, he was a Quantitative Financial Analyst with Menta Capital, San Francisco, CA. From 2008 to 2010 he was a Visiting Scientist in the Electrical Engineering Department at the Technion. Dr. Baron joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University in 2010 as an assistant professor. His research interests include information theory and signal processing.

Contact information

Email: barondror AT ncsu DOT edu 
Phone: +1-919-513-7974  
Note that I am not fond of phone conversations. Please use email.
Address: 
2097 Engr Bldg II 
Campus Box 7911 
NC State University 
Raleigh, NC 27695-7911 

CV

News

  • Press release about our work on using neural tangent kernels in federated learning.
  • K. Yue, R. Jin, R. Pilgrim, C.-W. Wong, D. Baron, and H. Dai, “Neural Tangent Kernel Empowered Federated Learning,” Int. Conf. Machine Learning, Baltimore, MD, June 2022 (arxiv).
  • M. Abdelkhalek, D. Baron, and C.-W. Wong, “Mismatched Estimation in the Distance Geometry Problem,” June 2022 (arxiv).
  • P. Kashyap, Y. Choi, S. Dey, C.-W. Wong, D. Baron, C. Cheng, T. Wu, and P. D. Franzon, “Modeling of Adaptive Receiver Performance Generative Adversarial Networks,” IEEE Electrical Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), San Diego, June 2022 (pdf).
  • I am spending the 2021-2022 academic year on remote sabbatical at Harvard, where I am studying quantum computing and information with Yue Lu.
  • P. Kashyap, W. S. Pitts, D. Baron, C.-W. Wong, T. Wu, and P. D. Franzon, “High Speed Receiver Modeling Using Generative Adversarial Networks,” IEEE 30th Conf. Electrical Perf. Electronic Packaging & Systems (EPEPS), Oct. 2021 (pdf).
  • K. Yue, R. Jin, R. Pilgrim, C.-W. Wong, D. Baron, and H. Dai, “Neural Tangent Kernel Empowered Federated Learning,” submitted, Oct. 2021 (arxiv).
  • Y. Ma, M. Kang, J. Silverstein, and D. Baron, “Local Convergence of an AMP Variant to the LASSO Solution in Finite Dimensions,” Proc. Int. Symp. Inf. Theory (ISIT), Melbourne, Australia, July 2021 (arxiv).
  • R. Goenka, S. Cao, C.-W. Wong, A. Rajwade, and D. Baron, “Contact Tracing Information Improves the Performance of Group Testing Algorithms,” submitted, June 2021 (arxiv).
  • Jesse Cramer and I recently put together a writeup about the 1% rule. This heuristic lets one balance luxury spending on their path to financial independence.
  • R. Goenka, S. Cao, C.-W. Wong, A. Rajwade, and D. Baron, “Contact Tracing Enhances the Efficiency of COVID-19 Group Testing,” to appear in Conf. Inf. Sciences & Systems (CISS), March 2021.
  • R. Goenka, S. Cao, C.-W. Wong, A. Rajwade, and D. Baron, “Contact Tracing Enhances the Efficiency of COVID-19 Group Testing,” to appear in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Process.(ICASSP), June 2021 (pdf, arxiv).
  • Teaching ECE 421 (introduction to signal processing), January 2021.
  • Op-ed for Technician, NC State University‘s student paper, about how the university’s messed-up reopening for the fall semester was preventable, August 2020. (link, pdf.)
  • Our work on pooled testing was featured in this interview in the Technician, NC State’s student paper, August 2020.
  • Teaching ECE 592 (topics in data science), August 2020.
  • Our work on pooled coronavirus testing was featured in this Nature interview, July 2020.
  • Y. Ma, M. Kang, J. Silverstein, and D. Baron, “Local Convergence of an AMP Variant to the LASSO Solution in Finite Dimensions,” submitted, July 2020 (arxiv, pdf).
  • I was on a panel on safely reopening schools. The main speakers were Darius Lakdawalla, an economist with expertise in epidemiology, and Paul Romer, the 2018 Nobel prize winner in economics. June 2020.
  • The following interview in IEEE Spectrum discussed our work on pooled coronavirus testing in detail. T. Perry, “Researchers are using algorithms to tackle the coronavirus test shortage: The scramble to develop new test kits that deliver faster results,” IEEE Spectrum, June 2020, page 4.
  • Our work on pooled coronavirus testing with side information was presented at the Paris Machine Learning Meetup (pdf file with slides), May 2020.