The ZiF supported the Research Group General Theory of Information Transfer and Combinatorics from October 2001 - August 2004, with its central research year from October 2002 - August 2003. The main goal of the research project was a further development of the General Theory of Information Transfer both along theoretical and experimental lines. The research group was organized by Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Rudolf Ahlswede from the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bielefeld.

Every Tuesday and Thursday the fellows met for the seminar of the Research Group where presentations were given and, subsequently, discussion were initiated. On Wednesdays, discussions in smaller groups took place. The selection of themes for the talks depends on the fellows currently presented and their special interests but center around certain main directions of the project.
In October, the group started with a main focus on Data Compression. A new development that came up was the introduction of a functional that plays the role of the entropy in classical data compression in the theory of identification for sources. At the end of October, a mini workshop was held on Flows in Networks. Properties of information flows in networks were studied. They have very distinct features compared to ordinary flows of physical commodities. In January, the emphasis was placed on Pseudo-Random Number Generation, which is extremely important in cryptography. The number-theoretic approach to this task turned out to be very fruitful. In February, Quantum Information Theory and here especially the phenomena connected with entanglement played a major role in the work of the Research Group. Furthermore, work on Pattern Discovery was initiated. Other themes that were covered included Gambling and Investment, Prediction, Search with Lies and Delay, Feedback Problems Language Evolution, Fix-Free Codes and various topics from Combinatorics (Splitting Property, Counting of Hypergraphs, Shifting Techniques).
In the last quarter of the reserach year, a main focus of the group's activities was on the subject of animal communication. There was an intense interaction between biologists working on animal communication and mathematicians working in information theory. The challenge was to find out whether the mathematical models of the general theory of information transfer, like identification, are realised by nature and where the problems from biology require the development of new models
In parallel there was a group of researchers interested in technical applications (for instance alarm systems) of the models from the general theory of information transfer. Therefore a very interesting interdisciplinary interaction between engineers and biologists happend.
Furthermore the research group had guests working on extensions of the models of information transfer to quantum information theory and there were a smaller group of persons studying philosophical questions about concepts of information as well.

Requests on the Research Group General Theory of Information Transfer and Combinatorics are answered by Dr. Christian Deppe, Tel. +49 521 106-4790, Email cdeppe@math.uni-bielefeld.de