Nikolaos M. Freris (尼克)


Professor of Computer Science

School of Computer Science and Technology

University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)

Vice Dean of International College

International College of University of Science and Technology of China

Email: nfr@ustc.edu.cn

Telephone:+86-(0) 551 63601767

Address:Office 515, Diansan Building, West Campus, 443 Huangshan Road, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China


Introduction

Welcome to the AIoT group! Please check our introduction video ( slides , poster ).

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: Distributed Learning, Deep Learning, Data Mining, Federated Learning, Online Learning, Reinforcement Learning
– Distributed Optimization
– Edge Computing
– Wireless Networks
– System Theory: Optimization, Estimation, and Control
– Signal Processing: Sparse sampling and Online algorithms

as well as applications in transportation, power systems, and robotics.


Teaching


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 transportation, power systems, sensor networks, and robotics. Dr. Freris has published several papers in high-profile conferences and journals held by IEEE, ACM, and SIAM and holds four patents. His research has been sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Anhui Department of Science and Technology, Tencent, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA. He was recognized as the 2023 IEEE ROBIO Best Paper Award Finalist, as well as with the USTC Alumni Foundation Innovation Scholar Award (twice), the IBM High Value Patent Award, the IBM Invention Achievement Award (twice), and the Gerondelis Foundation Scholarship.

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 IEEE, ACM, and CCF, as well as a member of SIAM.

CV  (Dec. 2024)


Publications (Google Scholar page)

Journal Articles

1. L. Wei and N. Freris, “Arctic Sea Ice Prediction based on Multi-scale Graph Modeling with Conservation Laws.” Accepted in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2024. 

2. Z. Wang, N. Freris, and X. Wei, “Logarithmic Spiral-shaped Robots for Versatile Grasping Across Scales.” Accepted in Device, 2024.   

3. Z. Huang and N. Freris, “Reinforcement Learning-based Layer-wise Aggregation for Personalized Federated Learning.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2024.

4. D. Yan, P. Yang, F. Shang, N. Freris, and Y. Yan, “Non-intrusive and Efficient Estimation of Antenna 3-D Orientation for WiFi APs.” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2024.  

5. Y. Zhang and N. Freris, “Adaptive Filter Pruning via Sensitivity Feedback.”   IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 10996-11008, 2024. 

6. L. Wei and N. Freris, “Multi-scale Graph Neural Network for Physics-informed Fluid Simulation.” Visual Computer, pp. 1-11, 2024 (also presented at the 40th Computer Graphics International (CGI) Conference, Aug. 2023).   

7. T. Wen and N. Freris, “Semantically Enhanced Multi-Object Detection and Tracking for Autonomous Vehicles.” IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 4600-4615, 2023.

8. Y. Li, P. Voulgaris, D. Stipanovic, and N. Freris, “Communication Efficient Curvature Aided Primal-dual Algorithms for Decentralized Optimization.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 68, no. 11, pp. 6573-6588, 2023.

9. N. Freris, A. Ajalloeian, and M. Vlachos, “Interpretable Embedding and Visualization of Compressed Data.” ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, vol. 17(2), pp. 1-22, 2023.

10. M. Li, J. Qin, N. Freris, and D. Ho, “Multi-Player Stackelberg-Nash Game for Nonlinear System via Value Iteration-Based Integral Reinforcement Learning.” IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 1429-1440, 2022.

11. 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.

12. S. Jabari, N. Freris, and D. Dilip, “Sparse travel time estimation from streaming data.” Transportation Science, vol. 54, no 1, pp. 1-20, 2020.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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. D. Yan, P. Yang, F. Shang, N. Freris, and Y. Yan, “Anteumbler: Non-Invasive Antenna Orientation Error Measurement for WiFi APs.” Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), pp. 1-10, June 2024.

2. Z. Wang, G. Wang, X. Chen, and N. Freris, “Kinematic modeling and control of a soft robotic arm with non-constant curvature deformation.” Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Robotics and Applications (ICRA), pp. 12749-12755, May 2024. 

3. Y. Zhang, L. Wei, and N. Freris, “Synergistic patch pruning for Vision Transformer: Unifying intra- & inter-layer patch importance.” Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), May 2024.

4. Z. Wang and N. Freris, “Exploiting frictional effects to reproduce octopus-like reaching movements with a cable-driven spiral robot.” Proceedings of the 7th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), pp. 537-542, April 2024.

5. Z. Yu and N. Freris, “Communication-efficient distributed optimization with adaptability to system heterogeneity.” Proceedings of the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 3321-3326, Dec. 2023.

6. D. Yi and N. Freris, “Distributed optimization on directed graphs based on inexact ADMM with partial participation.” Proceedings of the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 1138-1143, Dec. 2023.

7. Z. Wang, G. Wang, X. Chen, and N. Freris, “Dynamic Modeling and Control of a Soft Robotic Arm Using a Piecewise Universal Joint Model.” Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), pp. 1-6, Dec. 2023.

8. J. Liu, L. Zhang, C. Lv, T. Yu, N. Freris, and X. Li, “TPMDP: Threshold Personalized Multi-party Differential Privacy via Optimal Gaussian Mechanism.” Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS), pp. 161-169, Sep. 2023.  

9. M. Yuan and N. Freris, “JP-DouZero: an enhanced DouDiZhu AI based on reinforcement learning with peasant collaboration and intrinsic rewards.” Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), pp. 256-263, Aug. 2023.

10. Y. Li, P. Voulgaris, and N. Freris, “Distributed Primal-Dual Optimization for Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems.” Proceedings of the 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 5870-5875, Dec. 2022.

11. M. Yuan and N. Freris, “Energy-aware online task dispatching and scheduling for edge systems with energy harvesting.” Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Network of the Future (NoF), pp. 1-9, Oct. 2022.

12. X. Wang, B. Tan, Y. Guo, T. Yang, D. Huang, L. Xu, N. Freris, H. Zhou, and X. Li, “CONFLUX: A Request-level Fusion Framework for Impression Allocation via Cascade Distillation.” Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), pp. 4070–4078, Aug. 2022.

13. Y. Gong, Y. Li, and N. Freris, “FedADMM: A Robust Federated Deep Learning Framework with Adaptivity to System Heterogeneity.” Proceedings of the 38th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), pp. 2575-2587, May 2022.

14. T. Wen, Y. Zhang, and N. Freris, “PF-MOT: Probability Fusion Based 3D Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Vehicles.” Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Robotics and Applications (ICRA), pp. 700-706, May 2022.

15. Y. Li, P. Voulgaris, and N. Freris, “A communication efficient quasi-Newton method for large-scale distributed multi-agent optimization.” Proceedings of the 47th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 4268-4272, May 2022.

16. X. Yu, X. Li, J. Zhao, G. Shen, N. Freris, and L. Zhang, “ANTIGONE: Accurate Navigation Path Caching in Dynamic Road Networks leveraging Route APIs.” Proceedings of the 41st IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), pp. 1599-1608, May 2022.

17. Y. Li, N. Freris, P. Voulgaris, and D. Stipanovic, “DN-ADMM: Distributed Newton ADMM for Multi-agent Optimization.” Proceedings of the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 3343-3348, Dec. 2021. 

18. Y. Li, Y. Gong, N. Freris, P. Voulgaris, and D. Stipanovic, “BFGS-ADMM for Large-Scale Distributed Optimization.” Proceedings of the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 1689-1694, Dec. 2021. 

19. J. Huang, R. Huang, W. Liu, N. Freris, and H. Ding, “A Novel Sequential Coreset Method for Gradient Descent Algorithms.” Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), pp. 4412-4422, July 2021.

20. X. Wang, H. Zhou, N. Freris, W. Zhou, X. Guo, and X. Li, “CALM: Contactless Accurate Load Monitoring via Modality.” Proceedings of  the 18th IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (SECON), pp. 1-9, July 2021.

21. X. Wang, H. Zhou, N. Freris, W. Zhou, X. Guo, Z. Liu, Y. Ji, and X. Li, “LCL: Light Contactless Low-delay Load Monitoring via Compressive Attentional Multi-label Learning.” Proceedings of the 29th IEEE / ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), pp. 1-6, June 2021.

22. A. Li, L. Zhang, J. Wang, J. Tan, F. Han, Y. Qin, N. Freris, and X. Li, “Efficient Federated-Learning Model Debugging.” Proceedings of the 37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), pp. 372-383, April 2021.

23. 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.

24. 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), pp. 1022-1027, Nov. 2020.

25. 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.

26. P. Li, X. He, N. Freris, and P. Yang, “Capacity Analysis of Ambient Backscatter System with Bernoulli Distributed Excitation.” Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA), pp. 218-230, Sep. 2020.

27. 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.

28. Y. Li, N. Freris, P. Voulgaris, and D. Stipanovic, “D-SOP: Distributed Second Order Proximal Method for Convex Composite Optimization.” Proceedings of the 62nd American Control Conference (ACC), pp. 2844-2849, July 2020.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. A. Zouzias, M. Vlachos, and N. Freris, “Unsupervised Sparse Matrix Co-Clustering for Marketing and Sales Intelligence.” Proceedings of the 16th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD), pp. 591-603, May 2012.

45. N. Freris, M. Vlachos, and S. Kozat, “Optimal Distance Estimation Between Compressed Data Series.” Proceedings of the 12th SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pp. 343-354, April 2012.

46. N. Freris, M. Vlachos, and D. Turaga, “Cluster-Aware Compression with Provable K-means Preservation.” Proceedings of the 12th SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pp. 82-93, April 2012.

47. 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.

48. N. Freris, C. Hsu, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Resource allocation for multihomed scalable video streaming to multiple clients.” Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM), pp. 9-16, Dec. 2010.

49. 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.

50. 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.

51. 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.

52. 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 

1. Z. Wang and N. Freris, “Spiral winding robot.” CN114770585B, 2023.

2. N. Freris, O. Öçal, and M. Vetterli, “Method for compressed sensing of streaming data and apparatus for performing the same.” CN105531934B, 2019 / JP6495292B2, 2019 EP3044881B1, 2020 / HUE047132T2, 2020 / ES2782830T3, 2020 / US10728298B2, 2020 / KR102170342B1, 2020.

3. N. Freris, F. Fusco, and M. Vlachos, “Method and device for data mining on compressed data vectors.” CN104335176B, 2017 / US10528578B2, 2020.

4. C. Hsu, N. Freris, J. Singh, and X. Zhu, “Distortion-aware multihomed scalable video streaming to multiple clients.” US8793391B2, 2014.


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

2022.01.01-2024.12.31      USTC Research Department, China (co-Principal Investigator)  

面向芯片自动设计的人工智能理论与算法研究
“Artificial Intelligence Theory and Algorithms for Automatic Chip Design”
Award: RMB 500,000

2020.10.01-2022.06.30      FR202003, Tencent Holdings Ltd, China (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, 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, China (Principal Investigator)  

物联网的分布式学习
“Distributed Learning for Internet of Things”
Award: RMB 3,000,000

2017.09.01-2020.08.31      NSF #1717207, National Science Foundation, USA (Principal Investigator) 

Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF); Algorithmic Foundations (AF)
“AF: Small: Distributed Quasi-Newton Methods for Nonsmooth Optimization”
Award: $ 163,160

2014.08.01-2018.12.31      NYUAD Starting grant, UAE (Principal Investigator)

“Algorithms for Cyberphysical Systems”
Award: $ 1,230,000


Professional Activities

Keynote speeches

2025   “TBD,” International Conference on Software Engineering and Computer Science (CSECS), Taicang, China, Mar. 21-23

2024   “Distributed Machine Learning and Compression of Big Data and Large Models for AIoT,” Internet 3.0 Forum at the Global Digital Economy Conference (GDEC), Beijing, China, July 3

           “Inexact primal-dual methods for distributed learning,” International Seminar on Theoretical Computer Science (ISTCS), Kunming, China, Jan. 4-7

2023   “Adaptive Compression of Deep Neural Networks,” International Conference on Internet of Things and Machine Learning (IoTML), virtual, Sep. 15-17

           “Adaptive Compression of Deep Neural Networks,” International Conference on Network Communication and Information Security (ICNCIS), Mianyang, China, Aug. 6-8 

           “Adaptive Compression of Deep Neural Networks,” International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems (PRIS), virtual, July 28-30

           “SpiRobs: Bioinspired Soft Spiral Robots,” International Conference on Mechanics, Electronics, Automation and Automatic Control (MEAAC),  Wuhan, China, May 13-15

           “Adaptive Compression of Deep Neural Networks,” International Conference on Computer Information and Big Data Applications (CIBDA), Wuhan, China, Apr. 28-30

           “Adaptive Compression of Deep Neural Networks,” International Symposium on Computer Applications and Information Systems (ISCAIS), Chengdu, China, March 24-26

2022   “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communication Engineering (HPCCE), Harbin, China, Dec. 16-18 

           “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on Computer Systems and Communication Technology (ICCSCT), virtual, Nov. 25-26 

           “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering (ICEMME), virtual, Nov. 18-20

           “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Data Mining (FSDM), virtual, Nov. 4-7

           “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI), virtual, Oct. 28-30

           “Intelligent Transportation: Learning in real-time from distributed data,” International Conference on Informatics, Networking and Computing (ICINC), virtual, Oct. 14-16 

           “Communication-efficient distributed machine learning for AIoT,” International Conference on Internet of Things, Communication and Intelligent Technology (IoTCIT), virtual, Aug. 21-23

           “Communication-efficient distributed machine learning for AIoT,” International Conference on Computer and Information Processing Technology (ICCIPT), virtual, Aug. 5-7 

           “Communication-efficient distributed machine learning for AIoT,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing and Cloud Computing (AIIPCC), virtual, June 21-22 

           “Communication-efficient distributed machine learning for AIoT,” International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT), virtual, May 20-22 

           “Distributed learning in AIoT,” IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Signal Processing (ICSP), virtual, April 15-17 

           “Distributed learning in AIoT,” International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computing Technology (EECT), virtual, March 25-27 

           “Distributed learning in AIoT,” International Conference on Computer Information and Big Data Applications (CIBDA), virtual,  March 25-27

2021   “Distributed learning in AIoT,” International Conference on Algorithms, Computing and Artificial Intelligence (ACAI), virtual, Dec. 22-24  

           “Distributed learning in AIoT,” International Conference on Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI), virtual, Dec. 3-5

           “AIoT: Learning from distributed data in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Engineering (ICAICE), virtual, Nov. 5-7

           “AIoT: Learning from distributed data in Cyberphysical Systems,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Electronic Engineering (CSAIEE), virtual, Aug. 20-22

           “From IoT to AIoT: the Cyberphysical Systems perspective,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, Information System and Computer Engineering (CISCE), Beijing, China, May 14-16

2020   “From IoT to AIoT: the Cyberphysical Systems perspective,” International Conference on Communications, Information Systems and Software Engineering (CISSE), Guangzhou, China, Dec. 18-20

           “AIoT: Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Computer, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (ICCBDAI), Changsha, China, Oct. 24-25

2019   “Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing and Cloud Computing (AIIPCC), Sanya, China, Dec. 19-21

           “Learning in Cyberphysical Systems,” International Conference on Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI), Taiyuan, China, Nov. 8-10  

2017   “Exact data mining from inexact data.” International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Data Mining (DataMining), Paris, France, Sep. 7-8

Invited Seminars

2024   Zhejiang University: Distinguished lecture at SDG Global Summer School

2023   CAS Foreign Experts Symposium, Khalifa University, New York University Abu Dhabi, National Technical University of Athens

2022   CAA World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference

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

IEEE (Senior member), ACM (Senior member), CCF (Senior member), SIAM

Service

Editorial

2017-2017   Guest Editor: Special Issue on “Distributed Control and Optimization with Resource-Constrained Networked Systems,” Elsevier SI in Neurocomputing

Conference activities

2025   International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Singapore, Singapore (TPC member)

2024   International Seminar on Theoretical Computer Science (ISTCS), Kunming, China (Keynote session chair)

2023   International Conference on Computer, Internet of Things and Smart City (CIoTSC), Luoyang, China (General chair)  

           International Conference on Mechanics, Electronics, Automation and Automatic Control (MEAAC), Wuhan, China (TPC chair)

           International Conference on Electronic Communication and Artificial Intelligence (ICECAI), Guangzhou, China (General chair)

           International Symposium on Computer Applications and Information Systems (ISCAIS), Chengdu, China (Publication chair) 

           AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Washington, DC, USA (TPC member)

           International Conference on Electronic Information Engineering, Big Data and Computer Technology (EIBDCT), Xishuangbanna, China (TPC chair) 

2022   International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communication Engineering (HPCCE), Harbin, China (Organizing Committee chair)

           International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering (ICEMME), virtual (Publication chair)

           International Conference on Computer, Internet of Things and Control Engineering (CITCE), virtual (TPC chair)

           International Conference on Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI), virtual (TPC chair) 

           International Conference on Informatics, Networking and Computing (ICINC), virtual (TPC chair) 

           International Conference on Cloud Computing, Big Data and Digital Economy (ICCBD), virtual (TPC chair)

           International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT), virtual (Program chair)

           International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computing Technology (EECT), virtual (Session chair)

           AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), virtual (TPC member) 

2021   International Academic Exchange Conference on Science and Technology Innovation (IAECST), Guangzhou, China (Publication chair)

           International Conference on Computer Technology and Media Convergence Design (CTMCD), Sanya, China (Publication chair) 

           AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), virtual (TPC member)

2020   International Conference on Computer Science Communication and Network Security (CSCNS), Sanya, China (TPC member)

  IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), virtual (Invited session organizer & chair; two sessions)

  European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD), virtual (Chair for two sessions & TPC member)

 American Control Conference (ACC), virtual (Session co-chair)

 International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), virtual (TPC chair)

 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)

 International Conference on Big Data Computing and Communications (BigCom), Qingdao, China (TPC co-chair & panel discussion member)

2018   International Symposium on Intelligent Robots: Autonomy and Vision (IRAV), Abu Dhabi, UAE (Co-organizer)

2017   International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Data Mining, Paris, France (Moderator)

 NYUAD Transportation Symposium, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Co-organizer)

2016   Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Allerton, IL, USA (Special session co-chair)

 European Conference on Computational Optimization, Leuven, Belgium (Special session chair)

 NYUAD Transportation Symposium, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Co-organizer)

2015   International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina (TPC member)

2013   FRI workshop at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland (General chair)

2008   CSL Student Conference, Urbana, IL, USA (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, Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Network Science and Engineering, Power Systems, Intelligent Transportation Systems 

Letters: Control Systems, Communications, Signal Processing, Robotics and Automation

Conferences: CDC, ACC, ECC, ICASSP, ICRA, INFOCOM, CoDIT

Elsevier: Journals: Automatica, Annual Reviews in Control, Systems & Control Letters, Computer Communications, Ad Hoc Networks, Transportation Policy, Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems

Springer: Journals: VLDBJ, WWW, BIT Numerical Mathematics, Numerische Mathematik, Supercomputing, Numerical Algorithms, Applied Mathematics and Computing; Conference: VLDB

ACM: Journal: Transactions on Networking; Conference: KDD

SIAM: Journals: SIOPT, SIMAX; Conference: SDM

AMS: Mathematics of Computation

Other: Conferences: ICLR, AAAI, IJCAI, ECML-PKDD, IJCNN, IFAC, Allerton,  GPC, BigCom   


Awards & Recognition

2023   Best Paper Award in Biomimetics Finalist — IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO)

           CCF Senior Member

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