Alon Kipnis

About 
I'm a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Computer Science at Reichman University. I received my PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2017, advised by Andrea Goldsmith. From 2017 to 2021, I was a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Stanford, advised by David Donoho.
My research lies at the intersection of mathematical statistics, information theory, and signal processing. I focus on understanding and developing methods for analyzing high-dimensional, sparse, and noisy data — including time-series and text. My work blends rigorous mathematical theory with ambitious computational experiments and data analysis.
I'm always on the lookout for motivated graduate students with a strong mathematical background and a passion for data science. If that sounds like you, take a look at my current list of open projects.
Contact
Office Hours (Spring 2024/2025)
Tuesdays, 14:00-15:00
Address
C.121b
Efi Arazi School of Computer Science
Reichman University (formerly IDC)
Herzliya, Israel
alon.kipnis@runi.ac.il
kipnisal@alumni.stanford.edu
 Publications
Journal publications under review
- Tingnan Gong, Alon Kipnis, and Yao Xie. (2025). Higher-criticism for sparse multi-stream change-point detection 
- Alon Kipnis. (2024). The minimax risk in uniformity testing of poisson data under missing ball alternatives 
- Ben Galili, Alon Kipnis, and Zohar Yakhini. (2023). Detecting sparse and weak deviations of non-proportional hazard in survival analysis 
Journal Publications
- Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Alon Kipnis, Axel Bühler, Eli Piasetzky, Thomas Römer, and Israel Finkelstein. (2025) Critical biblical studies via word frequency analysis: unveiling text authorship. PLOS One 
- Alon Kipnis. (2025). Unification of rare/weak detection models using moderate deviations analysis and log-chisquared P-values. Statistica Sinica 
- Idan Kashtan and Alon Kipnis (2024). An information-theoretic approach for detecting edits in AI-generated text. Harvard Data Science Review 
- David L. Donoho and Alon Kipnis. (2024). The impossibility region for detecting sparse mixtures using the higher criticism. Annals of Applied Probability 
- Alon Kipnis and John C. Duchi. (2022). Mean estimation from one-bit measurements. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- David L. Donoho and Alon Kipnis. (2022). Higher Criticism to compare two large frequency tables, with sensitivity to possible rare and weak differences. Annals of Statistics 
- Alon Kipnis. (2022). Higher criticism for discriminating word-frequency tables and testing authorship. Annals of Applied Statistics 
- Alon Kipnis and Galen Reeves. (2021). Gaussian approximation of quantization error for estimation from compressed data. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Alon Kipnis, Stefano Rini, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. (2021). The rate-distortion risk in estimation from compressed data. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Stefano Rini, Alon Kipnis, Ruiyang Song, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. (2019). The compress-and-estimate coding scheme for Gaussian sources. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith and Yonina C. Eldar. (2018). The distortion rate function of sampled Wiener Processes. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina, C. Eldar. (2018). Fundamental distortion limits of analog to digital compression. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Alon Kipnis, Yonina C. Eldar, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. (2018). Analog-to-digital compression: a new paradigm for converting signals to bits. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith and Yonina, C. Eldar. (2017). function of cyclostationary Gaussian processes/. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, Yonina, C. Eldar and Tsachy Weissman. (2016). Distortion rate function of sub-Nyquist sampled Gaussian sources. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 
- Daniel Alpay and Alon Kipnis. (2015). Wiener chaos approach to optimal prediction. Numerical Functional Analysis and Optimization 
- Daniel Alpay and Alon Kipnis. (2013). A generalized white noise space approach to stochastic integration for a class of Gaussian stationary increment processes. Opuscula Mathematica 
Book Chapters
- Alon Kipnis, Yonina C. Eldar and Andrea J. Goldsmith. (2021). An information-theoretic approach to analog-to-digital compression 
Refereed Conference Publications
- Alexander Tsvetkov and Alon Kipnis. Information parity: Measuring and predicting the multilingual capabilities of language models. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EMNLP) 2024 
- Tingnan Gong, Alon Kipnis and Yao Xie. Higher-criticism for sparse multi-sensor change-point detection. 60th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2024 
- Alexander Tsvetkov and Alon Kipnis. multilingual compression parity: How efficiently large language models represent information across languages? ICML 2024 Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Foundation Models 
- Dana Levin and Alon Kipnis. The likelihood gain of a language model as a metric for text summarization. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2024. 
- Alon Kipnis. The minimax risk in testing the histogram of discrete distributions for uniformity under missing ball alternatives. 59th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2023 
- Alexander Tsvetkov and Alon Kipnis. EntropyRank: Unsupervised keyphrase extraction via side-information optimization for language model-based text compression ICML 2023 Workshop on Neural Compression: From Information Theory to Applications 
- Alon Kipnis. Rare and weak detection models under moderate deviations analysis and log-chisquared p-values. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2022 
- Alon Kipnis and David L. Donoho. Two-sample testing of word-frequency tables under rare/weak Perturbations. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2021 
- Alon Kipnis. Higher criticism as an unsupervised authorship discriminator. Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum 2020 
- Alon Kipnis and Galen Reeves. Gaussian approximation of quantization error for estimation from compressed data. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2019 
- Alon Kipnis and Galen Reeves. Single-letter formulas for quantized compressed sensing with Gaussian codebooks. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2019 
- Alon Kipnis, Galen Reeves, and Yonina C. Eldar. Single-letter formulas for quantized compressed sensing with Gaussian codebooks. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2018 
- Georgia Murray, Alon Kipnis, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. Lossy compression of decimated Gaussian random walks. 52nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems 2018 
- Alon Kipnis and John C. Duchi. Mean estimation from adaptive one-bit measurements. 55th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2017 
- Alon Kipnis, Galen Reeves, Yonina C. Eldar and Andrea J. Goldsmith. Compressed sensing under optimal quantization. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2017 
- Alon Kipnis, Stefano Rini, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. Coding theorems for the compress and estimate source coding problem. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2017 
- Ruyang Song, Stefano Rini, Alon Kipnis, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. Optimal rate-allocation in multiterminal compress-and-estimate source coding. IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2016 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina C. Eldar, Information rates of sampled Wiener processes. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2016 
- Alon Kipnis, Stefano Rini, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. emph{Multiterminal compress-and-estimate source coding}. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2016 
- Milind Rao, Alon Kipnis, Tara Javidi, Yonina C. Eldar and Andrea J. Goldsmith. System identification from partial samples: non-asymptotic analysis. IEEE 55th Conference on Decision and Control 2016 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith and Yonina C. Eldar. Optimal trade-off between sampling rate and quantization precision in A/D conversion. 53rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2015 
- Alon Kipnis, Stefano Rini, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. The indirect rate-distortion function of a binary i.i.d source. IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2015 
- Mainak Chowdhury, Alon Kipnis, and Andrea J. Goldsmith. Reliable uncoded communication in the quantized SIMO MAC. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2015 
- Alon Kipnis, Andreea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina C. Eldar. Optimal trade-off between sampling rate and quantization precision in Sigma-Delta A/D conversion. International Conference on Sampling Theory and Applications 2015 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina C. Eldar. Sub-Nyquist sampling achieves optimal rate-distortion. IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2015 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina C. Eldar. Rate-distortion function under sub-Nyquist nonuniform sampling. 52st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2014 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, and Yonina C. Eldar. Rate-distortion function of Gaussian Cyclostationary processes. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2014 
- Alon Kipnis, Andrea J. Goldsmith, Tsachy Weissman and Yonina C. Eldar. Rate-distortion function of sub-Nyquist sampled Gaussian processes corrupted by noise. 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2013 
Dissertations
- Alon Kipnis. (2017). Fundamental performance limits of analog-to-digital compression 
- Alon Kipnis. (2012). Generalized white noise space anlysis and stochastic integration with respect to a class of Gaussian stationary increment processes 
Patents
See this page, or search it yourself at SenseIP https://www.senseip.ai/.
Teaching
Office hours: Tuesdays. 14:00-15:00 Location: C.121b
Current (Spring 2024/5)
- Machine Learning from Data (CS 3141) 
- Seminar in Large language Models and Information Theory (CS 3968) - Students’ presentations at https://github.com/alonkipnis/ITnLM 
 
Past
- Fall 2024/5: - Advanced statistical analysis and model-based learning (formerly ‘Advanced Statistics for Data Science’) (CS 3676) 
 
- Spring 2023/4: - Machine Learning from Data (CS 3141) 
- Seminar in Large language Models and Information Theory (CS 3968) 
 
- Fall 2023/4: - Introduction to Information Theory (CS 3798) 
 
- Spring 2022/3: - Machine Learning from Data (CS 3141) 
- Advanced statistics for data science (CS 3676) 
 
- Fall 2022/3: - Information-theoretical analysis of neural language models (CS 3890) 
 
- Spring 2021/2: - Advanced statistics for data science (CS 3676) 
 
Spring 2021/2: (Stanford STATS 285) Massive computational experiments, painlessly
- with David Donoho and Masha Lofti 
Fall 2020/1: (Stanford STATS 207) Introduction to time-series analysis (Fall 2020-2021)
| Lecture 1 | course outline, examples of time series data, models for time series data | 
| Lecture 2 | sample autocorrelation and basic theoretical constructs | 
| Lecture 3 | time series regression | 
| Lecture 4 | trend models and Data Wrangling | 
| Lecture 5-6 | ARMA/ARIMA Modeling I | 
| Lecture 7 | ARMA/ARIMA Modeling II | 
| Lecture 8 | ARIMA/SARIMA | 
| Lecture 9 | regression with autocorrelated errors and lagged regression | 
| Lecture 10 | efficient markets hypothesis and GARCH (guest lecture by David Donoho) | 
| Lecture 11 | spectral Analysis I | 
| Lecture 12 | spectral Analysis II | 
| Lecture 13 | spectral regression and principal components | 
| Lecture 14 | state-space modeling and the Kalman Filter | 
| Lecture 15 | estimation of state-space models | 
| Lecture 16 | dynamic linear models with switching | 
| Lecture 17 | stochastic volatility, Bayesian analysis of state-space models | 
| Lecture 18 | bootstrap reality check and technical trading rules (guest lecture by David Donoho) | 
| Lecture 19 | prophet (guest lecture by Sean Taylor) | 
| Lecture 20 | high-dimensional data, DeepAR, VEST | 
Available Research Projects
- Goodness-of-fit and homogeneity testing with sparse data 
- Information-theoretic limitations of large language models 
- Multi-channel time-series prediction 
- Test clustering, retreival, and topic modeling 
- Survival analysis 
- Change-point detection 
