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Salman Avestimehr

Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science

Education

  • 2008, Doctoral Degree, University of California - Berkeley
  • 2005, Master's Degree, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California - Berkeley
  • 2003, Bachelor's Degree, Electrical Engineering, Sharif University Of Technology

Biography

Salman Avestimehr is a Dean's Professor, the inaugural director of the USC-Amazon Center for Secure and Trusted Machine Learning (Trusted AI), and director of the Information Theory and Machine Learning (vITAL) research lab. He is also the CEO and co-founder of FedML. He was also an Amazon Scholar in 2021. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to that, he obtained his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2003. He was an Assistant Professor at the ECE school of Cornell University from 2009 to 2013. He was also a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for the Mathematics of Information (CMI) at Caltech in 2008. His research interests are in the areas of information theory, machine learning, distributed computing, secure and private learning/computing, and federated learning.

Dr. Avestimehr has received various awards for his research and teaching, including The 2019 IEEE Information Theory Society James L. Massey Research & Teaching Award, an Information Theory Society and Communication Society Joint Paper Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Obama, a Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the U. S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, the David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize, and several Best Paper Awards at Conferences. He has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He was a general Co-Chair of the 2020 International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT). He is also a Fellow of IEEE.

Research Summary

Current research areas of Prof. Avestimehr include information theory, machine learning, distributed computing, secure and private learning/computing, and federated learning. Prof. Avestimehr is the inaugural director of the USC-Amazon Center for Secure and Trusted Machine Learning (Trusted AI), and director of the Information Theory and Machine Learning (vITAL) research lab. He is also the CEO and co-founder of FedML

Awards

  • 2022 Best Paper Award at FL-AAAI 2022
  • 2022 Best Paper Award at ACL-FL4NLP
  • 2022 The IEEE Information Theory Society Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award (as advisor)
  • 2021 Invited Speaker at National Academy of Engineering (NAE) EU-US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium
  • 2021 USC Mentoring Award
  • 2021 Qualcomm Innovation Award (as advisor)
  • 2020 IEEE Fellow
  • 2020 Baidu Best Paper Award at NeurIPS Spicy-FL Workshop
  • 2019 IEEE Information Theory Society James L. Massey Research & Teaching Award
  • 2019 ACM/IEEE High Performance Computing Conference (SC) Best Paper and Best Student Paper Award Finalists
  • 2019 ACM Mobihoc Best Paper Award Finalist (top 7 papers)
  • 2019 CAMS Prizes for Excellence in Research with a Substantial Mathematical Component (as advisor)
  • 2017 Jack K. Wolf Best Paper Award, 2017 IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory (ISIT)
  • 2017 Best Paper Award, 2017 IEEE GLOBECOM Conference
  • 2015 Okawa Foundation Research Award
  • 2013 Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award
  • 2013 Qualcomm Innovation Award
  • 2012 Michael Tien Excellebte in Teaching Award
  • 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from White House (President Obama)
  • 2011 US Air Force Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award
  • 2010 National Science Foundation CAREER award
  • 2009 David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize (Best PhD Dissertation) from UC Berkeley
  • 2005 Vodafone-U.S. Foundation Fellows Initiative Research Merit Award
  • 1999 Presidential Award for Ranking 2nd in Iranian National Qualifying Exam from President Khatami
  • 1998 Silver Medal Recipient in National Mathematical Olympiad
Appointments
  • Dir-Center, Amazon Center
  • Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Systems
  • Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Office
  • EEB 504B
  • Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center
  • 3740 McClintock Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90089
  • USC Mail Code: 2562
Contact Information
  • (213) 740-7326
  • avestime@usc.edu
Links