ECE Associate Professor Salim El Rouayheb is the recipient of a new NSF RINGS award for the project titled "Walk For Resiliency & Privacy: A Random Walk Framework for Learning at the Edge." Dr. El Rouayheb is the PI on this three-year $999,999.00 collaborative effort between Rutgers and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Rutgers’ share of the award is $330,162.00.
In this project, Dr. El Rouayheb and his team aim to advance Random Walk learning algorithms for the joint design of distributed learning and networking algorithms for Next Generation (NextG) wireless systems. The rigid centralized infrastructure of current systems can limit the full potential of achieving resiliency and privacy in NextG systems. Random walk algorithms enable a fluid architecture where centralization and full decentralization constitute two corner points. The proposed work will focus on major challenges and opportunities specific to the applicability of random walk learning in NextG, namely: (i) Adaptability to the heterogeneity of the data and the heterogeneity and dynamic nature of the network; (ii) Resiliency and graceful degradation in the face of failures via coding-theoretic redundancy methods; (iii) Model distribution across nodes and random walking snakes; and (iv) Privacy of the locally owned data.
More details on the project can be found on the NSF page here.
Congratulations Salim!