VONTOBEL Pascal Olivier

*SHB = Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Research Interest
  • Graphical models
  • Quantum information processing
  • Error-control coding
  • Information theory
  • Data science
  • Compressed sensing
  • Optimization theory
Courses Taught

  • ENGG1120 Linear Algebra for Engineers
  • ENGG2440 Discrete Mathematics for Engineers
  • IERG5200 Channel Coding and Modulation
  • IERG5380 Quantum Information Processing

VONTOBEL Pascal Olivier

Professor
Chairman And Graduate Division Head
FIEEE
Dip, Post-Dip, PhD (ETH Zurich)
(852) 3943-8390
Room 836, SHB*
pascal.vontobel [at] ie.cuhk.edu.hk
Website

Pascal O. Vontobel received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering in 1997, the Post-Diploma degree in information techniques in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 2003, all from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

From 1997 to 2002 he was a research and teaching assistant at the Signal and Information Processing Laboratory at ETH Zurich, from 2006 to 2013 he was a research scientist with the Information Theory Research Group at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, USA, and since 2014 he has been with the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where, since 2023, he has been a (full) professor, department chairman, and graduate division head. Besides this, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-2004), a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004-2005), a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006), and a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2014). His research interests lie in information and coding theory, quantum information processing, data science, communications, and signal processing.

Dr. Vontobel was an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2009-2012), an Awards Committee Member of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2013-2014), a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2014-2015), an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications (2014-2017), and a Thomas Cover Dissertation Awards Committee Member of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2023-2025). Moreover, he was / will be a TPC co-chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (2016, 2027), the IEICE International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications (2018), and the IEEE Information Theory Workshop (2018). He was the director of multiple Croucher Summer Courses in Information Theory (2021, 2023, 2025), co-organized several topical workshops, and was on the technical program committees of many international conferences. Furthermore, he was multiple times a plenary speaker at international information and coding theory conferences, received an exemplary reviewer award from the IEEE Communications Society, and was awarded the ETH medal for his Ph.D. dissertation. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Recent / Selected Publications
  • P.O. Vontobel, “Understanding the ratio of the partition sum to its Bethe approximation via double covers,” Proc. IEEE Inf. Theory Workshop, Sydney, Australia, Sep. 29 – Oct. 3, 2025.
  • Y. Huang, N. Kashyap, and P.O. Vontobel, “Degree-M Bethe and Sinkhorn permanent based bounds on the permanent of a non-negative matrix,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 70, no. 7, pp. 5289-5308, Jul. 2024.
  • Y. Huang and P.O. Vontobel, “The Bethe partition function and the SPA for factor graphs based on homogeneous real stable polynomials,” Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, Athens, Greece, pp. 3029-3034, Jul. 7-12 2024.
  • A. Nouri, R. Asvadi, J. Chen, and P.O. Vontobel, “Constrained secrecy capacity of finite-input intersymbol interference wiretap channels,” IEEE Trans. Comm., vol. 71, no. 6, pp. 3301-3316, Jun. 2023.
  • K.S. Ng and P.O. Vontobel, “Double-cover-based analysis of the Bethe permanent of non-negative matrices,”, Proc. IEEE Inf. Theory Workshop, Mumbai, India, pp. 1-6, Nov. 1-9, 2022.
  • H. Cao and P.O. Vontobel, “Using list decoding to improve the finite-length performance of sparse regression codes,” IEEE Trans. Comm., vol. 69, no. 7, pp. 4282-4293, Jul. 2021.
  • J.X. Li, J.M. Renes, and P.O. Vontobel, “Pseudocodeword-based decoding of quantum color codes,” Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1558-1563, Jul. 12-20 2021.
  • Y. Huang and P.O. Vontobel, “Sets of marginals and Pearson-correlation-based CHSH inequalities for a two-qubit system,” Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1338-1343, Jul. 12-20 2021.
  • M.X. Cao and P.O. Vontobel, “Bounding and estimating the classical information rate of quantum channels with memory,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 5601-5619, Sep. 2020.
  • H.-A. Loeliger and P.O. Vontobel, “Quantum measurement as marginalization and nested quantum systems,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 66, pp. 3485-3499, Jun. 2020.
Research Interest

  • Graphical models
  • Quantum information processing
  • Error-control coding
  • Information theory
  • Data science
  • Compressed sensing
  • Optimization theory
Courses Taught

  • ENGG1120 Linear Algebra for Engineers
  • ENGG2440 Discrete Mathematics for Engineers
  • IERG5200 Channel Coding and Modulation
  • IERG5380 Quantum Information Processing