Tamer Elbatt of AUC

In this talk, we review sample results based on our recent work in the areas of machine learning over networks and edge intelligence. In particular, we touch upon our work on communication-efficient federated learning, IoT systems with edge intelligence and federated learning applications in digital health.

In the first part of the talk, we shed light on two topics pertaining to federated learning and multi-tier intelligence. The first is the design of communication-efficient federated learning. In particular we introduce and evaluate, using a public data set, a second-order federated learning algorithm, coined Fed-Sophia, with computation and communication efficiency merits. Afterwards, we shift our attention to edge intelligence for IoT. We design and prototype a multi-tier computing system, with distributed machine learning, for a use case of vehicle tracking. The results reveal the merits of the proposed three-tier system in terms of prediction performance compared to centralized learning on the same test set, yet, with a significant reduction in the training data.

In the second part of the talk, we shift focus to edge intelligence applications, in particular, federated learning over blockchain networks. Motivated by the wide prevalence of decentralized data, we propose a novel serverless federated learning framework, relying on the distributed ledger security infrastructure of blockchains. This is achieved by employing “validators” who evaluate the quality of the “trainer” model updates through a validation dataset and byzantine fault tolerance. This work opens ample room for future research through revealing interesting insights and fundamental trade-offs. 

Biography:

Tamer ElBatt is currently a Professor at the CSE Dept., The American University in Cairo (AUC). He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in EECE from Cairo University, Egypt in 1993 and 1996, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA in 2000. From 2000 to 2009 he was with U.S. industry R&D labs, e.g., HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, CA, USA and Lockheed Martin ATC, Palo Alto, CA, USA, at various positions. From 2009 to 2017, he served at the EECE Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, as an Assistant Professor and later as an Associate and Full Professor. He also held a joint appointment with Nile University, Egypt from 2009 to 2017 and has served as the Director of the Wireless Intelligent Networks Center (WINC) from 2012 to 2017. In July 2017, he joined the Dept. of CSE at the American University in Cairo as an Associate Professor, where he is currently a Professor. He served as the CSE Director of the Graduate Program and later as the Associate Chair, from 2019 to 2022. Dr. ElBatt research is currently, and has been, supported by the Afretec Network, DAAD, NTRA, ITIDA, AUC, Qatar QNRF, EU FP7, H2020, General Motors, Microsoft, Google, Vodafone Egypt Foundation and the U.S. DARPA. He has published more than 150 papers in major journals and international conferences. Dr. ElBatt holds seven issued U.S. patents and one WIPO patent.

Dr. ElBatt is a Senior Member of the IEEE and has served on the TPC of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences. He served as the TPC Executive Vice Chair of the 6th ICCSPA’24 Conf., TPC Co-Chair of the 5th ICCSPA’22, Track Co-Chair of ITC-Egypt’22, publicity co-chair of IEEE VTC-Spring 2020, Demos Co-Chair of ACM Mobicom 2013 and the Publications Co-Chair of IEEE Globecom 2012 and EAI Mobiquitous 2014. Dr. ElBatt currently serves on the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Communications and Networks – Data Science for Communications and has served on the Editorial Board of IEEE TCCN, TMC and Wiley International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking. Dr. ElBatt has also served on the United States NSF and Fulbright interview panels. Dr. ElBatt was a Visiting Professor at the Dept. of Electronics, Politecnico di Torino, Italy in Aug. 2010, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Turkey in Aug. 2013 and the Dept. of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy in Aug. 2015. Dr. ElBatt has served as an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer since 2023. He is the recipient of the Google Faculty Research Award in 2011, the 2012 Cairo University Incentive Award in Engineering Sciences and the 2015 Egypt’s State Incentive Award in Engineering Sciences. Dr. ElBatt served as the IEEE Egypt Section Vice Chairman (2020-2023). His research interests lie in the broad areas of performance analysis, protocol design and optimization of wireless networks, mobile computing and IoT systems.

Email:

Address:El Cairo, Egypt