News

Stay updated with the latest research breakthroughs, publications, achievements, and milestones from the Secure Prediction, Edge AI, and LLM Lab.

Grant
Received NSF NAIRR Pilot Resource Allocation Grant!
December 2025

๐Ÿ† Received NSF NAIRR Pilot Resource Allocation Grant! Thanks NSF! [Link]

Service
Organized Special Session ROSE-LLM 2025 at ICMLA 2025
December 2025

๐Ÿ† SPEED LAB Organized a Special Session on Robustness and Security of Large Language Models (ROSE-LLM 2025) at the 24th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2025)!

Conference Paper Presented
Three Papers Presented at ICMLA 2025
December 2025

๐Ÿ† Three papers are presented at ICMLA 2025!

Journal Paper Acceptance
Paper Accepted at IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing
November 2025

๐Ÿ† Our paper, titled "Quantifying Robustness and Sustainability Trade-off in Federated Adversarial Learning for Cyber-Physical Systems" is accepted at IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing!

Achievement
Listed as World Top 2% of Scientists in Stanfordโ€“Elsevier Ranking
November 2025

๐Ÿ†Dr. Imteaj is Listed as World top 2% of scientists in the annual Stanfordโ€“Elsevier ranking!

Conference Paper Presented
Paper Presented at ICCV 2025
October 2025

๐Ÿ† Our paper, titled "Pose to Protect: Federated Skeleton-Based Anomaly Detection for Privacy-Conscious Video Surveillance" is presented at ICCV 2025 in Honolulu, Hawaii, one of the premier conferences in computer vision!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Three Papers Accepted in ICMLA'25
September 2025

๐Ÿ† Three papers are accepted in ICMLA'25!

Achievement
Dr. Imteaj Joined as Tenure-track Assistant Professor at FAU
August 2025

๐Ÿ† Dr. Imteaj joined as a Tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and I-SENSE Fellow at Florida Atlantic University.

Conference Paper Acceptance
Paper accepted at CVPR 2025 Fair, Data-efficient, and Trusted Computer Vision Workshop.
April 2025

Paper titled 'Towards Trustworthy Autonomous Vehicles with Vision-Language Models Under Targeted and Untargeted Adversarial Attacks' accepted at CVPR 2025 Fair, Data-efficient, and Trusted Computer Vision Workshop.

Conference Paper Acceptance
Our paper, titled ๐’๐‹๐€๐ƒ๐„: ๐’๐ก๐ข๐ž๐ฅ๐๐ข๐ง๐  ๐š๐ ๐š๐ข๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ƒ๐ฎ๐š๐ฅ ๐„๐ฑ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐จ๐ข๐ญ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ง ๐‹๐š๐ซ๐ ๐ž ๐•๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ง-๐‹๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฎ๐š๐ ๐ž ๐Œ๐จ๐๐ž๐ฅ๐ฌ is accepted in CVPR'25! (Ranked #1 CS Conference, 22.1% Acceptance Rate)
March 2025

Our paper 'SLADE: Shielding against Dual Exploits in Large Vision-Language Models' got accepted at CVPR'25.

Publication
Released a comprehensive survey paper on Distributed LLMs and Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey on Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions, led by FIU.
March 2025

Released a survey on Distributed and Multimodal LLMs led by FIU.

Conference Paper Acceptance
AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium: One paper accepted!
February 2025

Paper accepted at AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium.

Journal Paper Acceptance
IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence: Co-First authored journal paper published!
February 2025

Published co-first authored paper in IEEE Transactions on AI.

Achievement
Dr. Ahmed Imteaj Nominated for SIU Early Career Faculty Excellence Award
January 2025

Dr. Ahmed Imteaj has been nominated for the SIU Early Career Faculty Excellence Award.

Research Talk
IEEE BigDataโ€™24 & IEEE ICMLAโ€™24 โ€“ Two papers presented.
December 2024

Md Zarif Hossain, a member of our research team, presented two papers at IEEE BigDataโ€™24 and ICMLAโ€™24.

Grant
Dr. Ahmed Imteaj Awarded ORAU Research Innovation Partnerships Grant as Lead PI!
December 2024

Dr. Ahmed Imteaj has been awarded the ORAU Research Innovation Partnerships Grant as the Lead PI. We thank ORAU for their support!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Paper published at IEEE BigDataโ€™24.
November 2024

Our paper titled 'Securing Vision-Language Models with a Robust Encoder against Jailbreak and Adversarial Attacks' has been published at IEEE BigData'24. This research focuses on developing a robust encoder to secure vision-language models against jailbreak and adversarial attacks, ensuring the integrity and reliability of AI systems.

Achievement
Dr. Ahmed Imteaj Listed in Stanfordโ€™s Top 2% Scientists for Research Impact
2024

Dr. Ahmed Imteaj, Director of the SPEED Lab has been listed in the prestigious World's Top 2% Scientist list, as recognized by Stanford University. This recognition highlights his outstanding contributions to research with significant impact in 2023. The list, compiled by Stanford University and published by Elsevier, ranks scientists across various fields based on standardized citation metrics, such as citation counts, h-index, and co-authorship metrics.

Research Talk
Md Zarif Hossain presented our paper at ICDCS'24 in New Jersey!
2024

Md Zarif Hossain, a member of our research team, presented our paper titled 'FLAMINGO: Adaptive and Resilient Federated Meta-Learning against Adversarial Attacks' at the ICDCS workshop held in New Jersey.

New Member
MS Student, Oleksandr Jockusch joins SPEED Lab!
2024

We are excited to welcome Oleksandr, our newest MS student, to the SPEED Lab! Oleksandr will be working on the intersection of federated learning and VLM. Welcome to SPEED Lab, Oleksandr!

New Member
New PhD Student, Awal Ahmed Fime Joins SPEED Lab. Welcome Awal!
2024

We are excited to welcome Awal Ahmed Fime, our newest PhD student, to the SPEED Lab! Awal's will be working on improving perception and decision-making of Connected Autonomous Vehicles. Welcome to SPEED Lab, Awal!

Achievement
Dr. Imteaj received the NSF CRII Grant!
2024

April 2024 - ๐Ÿ† Dr. Ahmed Imteaj, a distinguished faculty member at the School of Computing, has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) grant of amount $167,000 as a sole PI. This accolade includes a substantial sum of $167,500, provided by the NSF's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems. Thanks to NSF!

Achievement
Dr. Imteaj honored with the Outstanding Teacher of the Year award!
2024

April 2024 - ๐Ÿ† Congrats to SPEED Lab Director, Dr. Imteaj for receiving the Outstanding Teacher of the year award from the School of Computing at Southern Illinois University!

Achievement
Dr. Imteaj received DHS CINA Grant!
2024

March 2024 - ๐Ÿ† Dr. Ahmed Imteajโ€™s collaborative project with FIU has been awarded a grant from US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA) program. The project is scheduled for a duration of one year, with an approved funding amount of around $100,000. Thanks to DHS!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Two Papers accepted at the 44th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'24)!
2024

April 2024 Two papers from the SPEED Lab is accepted at the prestigious 44th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'24) conference. Congrats to PhD student, Zarif and Dr. Imteaj!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Four Papers accepted at the 48th IEEE International Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications (COMPSAC 2024)
2024

March 2024- Four papers from the SPEED Lab is accepted at the IEEE COMPSAC'24 conference.

Achievement
Md Zarif Hossain Awarded Prestigious Doctoral Fellowship!
2024

December 2023 SPEED lab member, Md Zarif Hossain, has been awarded with a prestigious Doctoral fellowship in recognition of his exceptional academic achievements and potential in research. Zarifโ€™s unwavering commitment to advancing the boundaries of our understanding through rigorous research has distinguished him among his peers, making this accolade a well-deserved acknowledgment of his hard work and dedication. Congratulations, Zarif!

Achievement
Saika Won the Second Prize at CMD-IT/ACM RICHARD TAPIA Conference
2023

November 23 SPEED Lab member, Saika Zaman won the Second Prize for her paper on Trustworthy Agent-Driven Particle Swarm Optimization for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning at the 2023 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in Dallas, Texas, and she has been awarded the prestigious Tapia scholarship. Congratulations, Saika!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Paper accepted at IEEE INFOCOM'24!
2024

Dr. Imteaj will present the paper at Vancouver!

Journal Paper Acceptance
Paper published at IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence!
2024

A demonstration of our work can be found at https://youtu.be/5gD1Te1Fgnw!

Conference Paper Acceptance
Paper accepted at IEEE ICC'24!
2024

Conference Paper Acceptance
Two Papers accepted at IEEE SusTech'24!
2024

Conference Paper Acceptance
Paper published at IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (DSC'23)!
2023

PhD Student Md Zarif Hossain presented the paper in the conference!

Paper accepted and presented at AI2SE, Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'23)!
2023

Dr. Imteaj presented the paper in Washington DC!

MS Project
Gireesh's Successful Completion of his MS Project!
2023

SPEED Lab member, Gireesh Nadh Mekala successly completed his MS project on Federated Learning-driven Real-time Traffic Analysis and Forecasting using Social Media Data under the supervision of Dr. Ahmed Imteaj. Congrats, Gireesh!

Journal Paper Acceptance
Paper accepted at IEEE IoT Journal!
September 2023

Our paper on Federated Learning and Blockchain in collaboration with FIU is published at IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Impact Factor: 10.238)!

Conference Paper Presented
One Paper is accepted and presented at IEEE SMARTCOMP'23
12 July, 2023

Our paper, Assessing Wearable Human Activity Recognition Systems Against Data Poisoning Attacks in Differentially-Private Federated Learning, has been accepted to IEEE SmartComp'23! SPEED Lab PhD student Md. Zarif Hossain presented the paper at Nashville, TN

Achievement
Zarif received NSF Student Travel Grant!
May 2023

SPEED Lab PhD Student, Md Zarif Hossain has been awarded with prestigious NSF Student Travel Grant to attend 2023 ACM MobiHoc. Congratulations, Zarif!

Student Success
Boyd joined at a startup as a Machine Learning Engineer!

SPEED Lab former undergraduate student researcher, Thomas Boyd joined at a startup as a ML Engineer. Congrats, Boyd!

Student Success
Thomas joined Mastercard as a Software Engineer!

SPEED Lab former undergraduate student researcher, Thomas Zemen joined Mastercard as a Software Engineer. Congrats, Thomas!

Service
Dr. Imteaj joined as a Guest Editor
January 2023

Dr. Imteaj joined as a Guest Editor of Privacy and Security in Federated Learning, A special issue of Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety.

Conference Paper Presented
Paper Presented at IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI)

Our latest research on Label Flipping Data Poisoning Attack Against Wearable Human Activity Recognition System is accepted at IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence!