The ÌÇÐÄlogo Information Theory Society is pleased to announce that Cynthia Rush of Columbia University has been named the 2026 Goldsmith Lecturer. The Goldsmith Lecturer is a woman, no more than ten years beyond having her highest degree conferred, selected for the quality of her research contributions in information theory and related areas and her ability to deliver an excellent lecture at one of the Society's Schools of Information Theory. Cynthia Rush will deliver the Goldsmith Lecture at one of the 2026 Information Theory Schools.
Cynthia Rush has made important contributions to information theory and statistics, particularly to Approximate Message Passing (AMP) algorithms, a powerful class of methods used for large-scale inference and recovery problems such as compressed sensing, high-dimensional regression, and modern data analysis. Her work established the first rigorous performance guarantees for AMP in realistic finite-dimensional settings and led to capacity-achieving constructions for Gaussian channels using sparse regression codes. Through clear, insightful lectures and mentorship, she will engage students and early-career researchers at an IT Society School of Information Theory.
received the B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010 and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Yale University in 2011 and 2016, respectively. She is currently an Associate Professor of statistics with Columbia University. Her research interests include message passing algorithms, statistical robustness, and applications to wireless communications