We see considerable overlap in research interests between information theory and algorithm design in the area of coding problems for data compression, with particular focus on lossless tree structured codes such as Huffmann codes and its variants. Unfortunately, there is not as much overlap in our perspectives. Information theorists are more concerned with entropy-based performance bounds and tradeoffs with respect to additional criteria of interest in the context of data compression systems, e.g. synchronization or buffer management.
Computer scientists are more concerned with questions of efficiency and algorithm design.
These very different perspectives on similar problems has led to a lack of communication, occasionally resulting in situations in which problems considered difficult by one community are actually solvable using tools well developed and understood by the other. We thus think a small workshop on codes and trees discussing both the algorthmic and information theoretic approaches would be useful in promoting the exchange of ideas between the two communities.