Nikolaos M. Freris 尼克
Announcement
We are actively looking to recruit graduate (MS, PhD) and undergraduate students and postdoctoral researchers in a wide range of projects pertaining to AIoT ( Artificial Intelligence of Things ).
Applicants may submit their CV and supporting documents (cover letter, research statement, selected publications) to Prof. Freris (nfr@ustc.edu.cn).
欢迎加入人工智能物联网实验室
The AIoT Lab at USTC is recruiting students at all levels
Education
– PhD Electrical & Computer Engineering – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010)
– MS Mathematics – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008)
– MS Electrical & Computer Engineering – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2007)
– Diploma Electrical & Computer Engineering – National Technical University of Athens (2005)
Research
Cyberphysical Systems (CPS) encapsulate very large networks of “smart” devices (possessing sensing, communication, and computation capabilities) that control physical entities. Notable examples enlist Smart Cities, Smart Grids, Intelligent Transportation, Sensor Networks, and Swarm Robotics. The ever-emerging paradigm of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) targets solutions that capitalize the computational power of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to enable Artificial Intelligence (AI) in system operations.
Our group conducts interdisciplinary research across a broad range of topics and applications pertaining to AIoT / CPS / IoT such as:
– Machine Learning: Federated Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Real-time Learning, and Data Mining
– Distributed Optimization
– Edge Computing
– Wireless Networks
– System Theory: Optimization, Estimation, and Control
– Signal Processing: Sparse sampling and Online algorithms
as well as applications in power systems, transportation, cyber security & privacy, robotics, and more.
Teaching
CS05136 Queueing Theory & Applications
Brief Bio
Nick Freris is Professor in the School of Computer Science at USTC, and Vice Dean of the International College. He received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, in 2005, and the M.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the M.S. degree in Mathematics, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2007, 2008, and 2010, respectively.
His research lies in AIoT/CPS/IoT: machine learning, distributed optimization, data mining, wireless networks, control, and signal processing, with applications in power systems, sensor networks, transportation, cyber security, and robotics. Dr. Freris has published several papers in high-profile conferences and journals held by IEEE, ACM, and SIAM. He holds three patents and two patent applications. His research has been sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Anhui Dept. of Science and Technology, Tencent, and NSF, and was recognized with the USTC Alumni Foundation Innovation Scholar award, the IBM High Value Patent award, two IBM invention achievement awards, and the Gerondelis foundation award.
Previously, he was with the faculty of NYU and, before that, he held senior researcher and postdoctoral researcher positions at EPFL and IBM Research, respectively. Dr. Freris is a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE, and a member of CCF and SIAM.
CV (Mar. 2021)
Journal Articles
1. M. Li, J. Qin, N. Freris, D. Ho, “Multi-Player Stackelberg-Nash Game for Nonlinear System via Value Iteration-Based Integral Reinforcement Learning.” Accepted at the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2020.
2. T. Huang, N. Freris, P. R. Kumar, and L. Xie, “A Synchrophasor Data-driven Method for Forced Oscillation Localization under Resonance Conditions.” IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 3927-3939, 2020.
3. S. Jabari, N. Freris, and D. Dilip, “Sparse travel time estimation from streaming data.” Transportation Science, vol. 54, no 1, pp. 1-20, 2020.
4. P. Latafat, N. Freris, and P. Patrinos, “A new randomized block-coordinate primal-dual algorithm for distributed optimization.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 64, no. 10, pp. 4050-4065, 2019.
5. A. Darabseh and N. Freris, “A software-defined control for IoT Cyberphysical Systems.” Journal of Cluster Computing, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 1107-1122, 2019.
6. M. Vlachos, N. Freris, and A. Kyrillidis, “Compressive Mining: Fast and Optimal Data Mining in the Compressed Domain.” International Journal on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB Journal), vol. 24(1), pp. 1-24, 2015
7. S. Zoumpoulis, M. Vlachos, N. Freris, and C. Lucchese, “Right-Protected Data Publishing with Provable Distance-based Mining.” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 26(8), pp. 2014-2028, 2014.
8. A. Zouzias and N. Freris, “Randomized Extended Kaczmarz for Solving Least Squares.” SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, vol. 34(2), pp. 773-793, 2013.
9. N. Freris, C. Hsu, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Distortion-Aware Scalable Video Streaming to Multinetwork Clients.” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 469-481, 2013.
10. N. Freris, S. Graham, and P. R. Kumar, “Fundamental Limits on Synchronizing Clocks over Networks.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 1352-1364, 2011.
11. N. Freris, H. Kowshik, and P. R. Kumar, “Fundamentals of large sensor networks: Connectivity, Capacity, Clocks and Computation.” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 98, no. 1, pp. 1828-1846, 2010.
Conference Papers
1. A. Li, L. Zhang, J. Wang, J. Tan, F. Han, Y. Qin, N. Freris, and X. Li, “Efficient Federated-Learning Model Debugging.” Accepted at the 37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), April 2021.
2. K. Zhang, S. Cong, Y. Tang, and N. Freris, “An Efficient Online Estimation Algorithm for Evolving Quantum States.” Proceedings of the 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), pp. 2249-2253, Jan. 2021.
3. N. Freris, M. Vlachos, and A. Ajalloeian, “An Interpretable Data Embedding under Uncertain Distance Information.” Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), Nov. 2020.
4. C. Zhang, H. Tan, H. Huang, Z. Han, S. Jiang, N. Freris, and X. Li, “Online Dispatching and Scheduling of Jobs with Heterogeneous Utilities in Edge Computing.” Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (MobiHoc), pp. 101-110, Oct. 2020.
5. P. Li, X. He, N. Freris, and P. Yang, “Capacity Analysis of Ambient Backscatter System with Bernoulli Distributed Excitation.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA), pp. 218-230, Sep. 2020.
6. N. Freris, C. Yang, and M. Vlachos, “FIDE: Fast and Interpretable 2D Embedding with correlation, distance, and rank considerations.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), pp. 57-65, July 2020.
7. Y. Li, N. Freris, P. Voulgaris, and D. Stipanovic, “D-SOP: Distributed Second Order Proximal Method for Convex Composite Optimization.” Proceedings of the American Control Conference (ACC), pp. 2844-2849, July 2020.
8. W. Li, T. Huang, N. Freris, P. R. Kumar, and L. Xie, “Data-driven Localization of Forced Oscillations in Power Systems.” Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT Asia), pp. 239-243, May 2019.
9. H. Wai, N. Freris, A. Nedich, and A. Scaglione, “SUCAG: Stochastic Unbiased Curvature-aided Gradient Method for Distributed Optimization.” Proceedings of the 57th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 1751-1756, Dec. 2018.
10. M. Smyrnakis, N. Freris, and H. Tembine, “Consensus over evolutionary graphs.” Proceedings of the 17th IEEE European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 2218-2223, June 2018.
11. T. Huang, N. Freris, P. R. Kumar, and L. Xie, “Localization of forced oscillations in the power grid under resonance conditions.” Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), March 2018.
12. H. Nahas, A. Sirhindi, and N. Freris, “A new solution for UWB localization: Online algorithms, implementation and testbed.” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Sep. 2017.
13. A. Darabseh and N. Freris, “A Software Defined Architecture for Cyberphysical Systems.” Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Software Defined Systems (SDS), pp. 54-60, May 2017.
14. D. Dilip, N. Freris, and S. Jabari, “Sparse estimation of travel time distributions using Gamma kernels.” 96th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (TRB), Jan. 2017.
15. X. Duan, N. Freris, and P. Cheng, “Secure clock synchronization under collusion attacks.” Proceedings of the 54th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton), pp. 1142-1148, Sep. 2016.
16. N. Freris and P. Patrinos, “Distributed computing over encrypted data.” Proceedings of the 54th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton), pp. 1116-1122, Sep. 2016.
17. P. Sopasakis, N. Freris, and P. Patrinos, “Accelerated reconstruction of a compressively sampled data stream.” Proceedings of the 24th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), pp. 1078-1082, Aug. 2016.
18. A. Darabseh, N. Freris, Y. Jararweh, and M. Al-Ayyoub, “SDCache: Software Defined Data Caching Control for Cloud Services.” Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud), pp. 164-169, Aug. 2016.
19. A. Zouzias and N. Freris, “Randomized Gossip Algorithms for Solving Laplacian Systems.” Proceedings of the 14th IEEE European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 1920-1925, July 2015.
20. N. Freris, O. Öçal, and M. Vetterli, “Compressed Sensing of streaming data.” Proceedings of the 51st Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing (Allerton), pp. 1242-1249, Oct. 2013.
21. G. Baechler, N. Freris, F. Quick, and R. Crochiere, “Finite rate of innovation based modeling and compression of ECG signals.” Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 1252-1256, May 2013.
22. N. Freris and A. Zouzias, “Fast distributed smoothing of relative measurements.” Proceedings of the 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 1411-1416, Dec. 2012.
23. A. Zouzias, M. Vlachos, and N. Freris, “Unsupervised Sparse Matrix Co-Clustering for Marketing and Sales Intelligence.” Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7301, pp. 591-603, May 2012.
24. N. Freris, M. Vlachos, and S. Kozat, “Optimal Distance Estimation Between Compressed Data Series.” Proceedings of the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pp. 343-354, April 2012.
25. N. Freris, M. Vlachos, and D. Turaga, “Cluster-Aware Compression with Provable K-means Preservation.” Proceedings of the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pp. 82-93, April 2012.
26. N. Freris, “Performance bounds for CSMA-based Medium Access Control.” Proceedings of the 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 5945-5950, Dec. 2011.
27. N. Freris, C. Hsu, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Resource allocation for multihomed scalable video streaming to multiple clients.” Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM), pp. 9-16, Dec. 2010.
28. C. Hsu, N. Freris, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Rate control and stream adaptation for scalable video streaming over multiple access networks.” Proceedings of the 18th International Packet Video Workshop (PV), pp. 33-40, Dec. 2010.
29. N. Freris, V. Borkar, and P. R. Kumar, “A model-based approach to clock synchronization.” Proceedings of the 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 5744-5749, Dec. 2009.
30. R. McCabe, N. Freris, and P. R. Kumar, “Controlled Random Access MAC for Network Utility Maximization in Wireless Networks.” Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 2350-2355, Dec. 2008.
31. N. Freris and P. R. Kumar, “Fundamental Limits on Synchronization of Affine Clocks in Networks.” Proceedings of the 46th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 921-926, Dec. 2007.
Technical Reports
1. N. Freris, O. Öçal, and M. Vetterli, “Recursive Compressed Sensing,” 2013.
2. N. Freris, V. Borkar, and P. R. Kumar, “Model-based clock synchronization protocol for wireless sensor networks,” 2013.
Patents
Granted
1. N. Freris, O. Öçal, and M. Vetterli, “Method for compressed sensing of streaming data and apparatus for performing the same.” CN105531934B, 2019 / JP6495292B2, 2019 / ES2782830T3, 2020 / HUE047132T2, 2020 / EP3044881B1, 2020 / US10728298B2, 2020.
2. N. Freris, F. Fusco, and M. Vlachos, “Method and device for data mining on compressed data vectors.” CN104335176B, 2017 / US10528578B2, 2020.
3. C. Hsu, N. Freris, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Distortion-aware multihomed scalable video streaming to multiple clients.” US8793391B2, 2014.
Applications
4. S. Jabari, N. Freris, and D. Dilip, “Systems and methods for sparse travel time estimation.” US20180232650A1, 2018.
5. N. Freris and M. Vlachos, “Compression of data partitioned into clusters.” US 20130031063A1, 2013.
Theses
1. N. Freris, “Wireless Networks: Model and Optimization based approaches to Clock Synchronization, Random Access MAC and Video Streaming.” PhD dissertation, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Aug. 2010.
2. N. Freris, “Fundamental limits on network clock synchronization.” MS thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dec. 2007.
3. N. Freris, “Parameter estimation of a new insulin-glucose model.” Diploma thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, July 2005 (in Greek).
Funding
Active Projects
2020.10.01-2021.09.30 FR202003, Tencent Holdings Ltd (Principal Investigator)
保证广告投放的多目标深度强化学习框架
“A Multi-Objective Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Guaranteed-Delivery Advertising”
Award: RMB 200,000
2019.12.01-2022.11.30 2019YFB2102200, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Co-Principal Investigator)
国家重点研发计划“物联网与智慧城市关键技术及其示范”重点专项：面向城市精准管理的新型群智感知技术及应用
“New Group Intelligence Sensing Technology and Application for City Precision Management”
Award: RMB 17,960,000
Principal Investigator for sub-project 2019YFB2102201: RMB 3,510,000
2019.07.01-2022.06.30 201903a05020049, Anhui Department of Science and Technology, China (Principal Investigator)
安徽省科技重大专项公开竞争类-技术领域项目-高新领域：基于5G的车路云协同自动驾驶关键技术研究与应用
Research and Application of Key Technologies of “Vehicle-Road-Network Collaborative Automatic Driving Based on 5G
Award：RMB 2,000,000
2019.01.01-2023.12.31 USTC Starting grant (Principal Investigator)
物联网的分布式学习
“Distributed Learning for Internet of Things”
Award: RMB 3,000,000
Past Projects
2017.09.01-2020.08.31 NSF #1717207, USA (Principal Investigator)
“AF: Small: Distributed Quasi-Newton Methods for Nonsmooth Optimization”
Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF); Algorithmic Foundations (AF)
Award: $ 163,160.00
2014.08.01-2018.12.31 NYUAD Starting grant, UAE (Principal Investigator)
“Algorithms for Cyberphysical Systems”
Award: $ 1,230,000
Professional Activities
Keynote/Plenary talks
2020 “From IoT to AIoT: the Cyberphysical Systems perspective,” International Conference on Communications, Information Systems and Software Engineering (CISSE), Guangzhou, China, Dec. 18-20, 2020
“AIoT: Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Computer, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (ICCBDAI), Changsha, China, Oct. 24-25, 2020
2019 “Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing and Cloud Computing (AIIPCC), Sanya, China, Dec. 19-21, 2019
“Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI), Taiyuan, China, Nov. 8-10, 2019
2017 “Exact data mining from inexact data.” International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Data Mining (DataMining), Paris, France, Sep. 7-8, 2017
Invited Seminars
2019 IET-CSR Workshop on Advances in Cyber-Physical Systems & Robotics
IEEE Sustainable Power & Energy Conference (iSPEC)—Panel on Emerging Technologies
2018 Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), KTH;
2017 Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, National Technical University of Athens, NYU-Tandon School of Engineering;
2016 UC Berkeley, KU Leuven;
2015 Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Khalifa University, Masdar Institute;
2014 IMT-Lucca, Qualcomm, IBM Research;
2013 EPFL, ETH, Texas A&M University, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professional Memberships
ACM (Senior member), IEEE (Senior member), SIAM, CCF
Service
Editorial
2020-now Associate Editor for Journal of Advanced Science and Technology (AST)
2017-2017 Guest Editor: Special Issue on “Distributed Control and Optimization with Resource-Constrained Networked Systems,” Elsevier SI in Neurocomputing, Dec. 2017
Conference activities
2021 AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), online (TPC member)
2020 2nd International Conference on Computer Science Communication and Network Security (CSCNS), Sanya, China (TPC member)
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), online (invited session organizer & chair; two sessions)
European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD), online (chair for two sessions & TPC member)
American Control Conference (ACC), online (session co-chair)
6th International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), online (TPC chair)
15th International Conference on Green, Pervasive and Cloud Computing (GPC), Xi’an, China (TPC member)
2019 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing and Cloud Computing (AIIPCC), Sanya, China (general moderator/host)
5th International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), Qingdao, China (Panel discussion member & TPC co-chair)
2018 1st International Symposium on Intelligent Robots: Autonomy and Vision (IRAV), Abu Dhabi (co-organizer)
2017 4th International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Data Mining, Paris, France (moderator)
2nd NYUAD Transportation Symposium (co-organizer)
2016 54th Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (special session co-chair)
4th European Conference on Computational Optimization (special session chair)
1st NYUAD Transportation Symposium (co-organizer)
2015 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina (TPC member)
2013 1st FRI workshop at EPFL (general chair)
2008 4th CSL Student Conference (general chair)
Reviewing
IEEE: Transactions: Automatic Control, Information Theory, Networking, Signal Processing, Control of Network Systems, Control of Sensor Networks, Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Industrial Informatics, Circuits & Systems
Letters: Control Systems, Communications, Signal Processing
Conferences: CDC, ACC, ECC, ICASSP, ICRA, INFOCOM
Elsevier: Journals: Automatica, Annual Reviews in Control, Systems & Control Letters, Computer Communications, Ad Hoc Networks, Transportation Policy
Springer: Journals: VLDBJ, WWW, BIT Numerical Mathematics, Numerische Mathematik, Supercomputing; Conference: VLDB
ACM: Journal: Transactions on Networking; Conference: KDD
SIAM: Journals: SIOPT, SIMAX; Conference: SDM
AMS: Mathematics of Computation
Other: Conferences: AAAI, ECML-PKDD, BigCom, IJCAI, IFAC, Allerton
Awards & Recognition
2021 USTC Alumni Foundation Innovation Scholar award (中国科大新创校友基金会“新创学者奖”）
2020 ACM Senior Member
USTC Alumni Foundation Innovation Scholar award (中国科大新创校友基金会“新创学者奖”）
2019 USTC Alumni Foundation Innovation Scholar award (中国科大新创校友基金会“新创学者奖”）
2016 IEEE Senior Member
2014 IBM High Value Patent award
2012 SDM travel award
2011 IBM Invention Achievement award
2010 Gerondelis Foundation Scholarship
2008 Vodaphone graduate fellowship
2001-2004 Papakyriakopoulos award; Tziafetas award; Scholarship from the Greek National Scholarship Foundation
