North Carolina A&T Professor Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Strategic Insights -

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University College of Engineering assistant professor Olusola Odeyomi, Ph.D., has been awarded the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, one of the agency's most prestigious honors for early-career faculty. Odeyomi's research focuses on improving federated learning, a method that enables multiple devices or organizations to train a shared machine learning model without exchanging private data. He aims to tackle the critical issues of fairness and privacy in federated learning in dynamic environments, designing strategies that incentivize meaningful contributions without compromising efficiency or security.

Key Takeaways:

  • Olusola Odeyomi, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina A&T, has received the NSF's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his research on improving federated learning.
  • Odeyomi's research focuses on addressing the challenges of fairness, communication, and privacy in federated learning, which is essential for advancing the technology and its real-world applications.
  • The CAREER award is one of the NSF's most prestigious honors for early-career faculty, supporting promising teacher-scholars who have the potential to become academic role models and lead advances in research and education.
  • The award will enable Odeyomi to tackle critical issues in federated learning, design strategies to incentivize meaningful contributions, and establish rigorous mathematical foundations for the technology.
  • Partnerships with industry are expected to help translate the work into real-world applications, contributing to technological advancement and economic growth.
  • Odeyomi's appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina A&T in 2022 has been a significant milestone in his career.

Statistics:

  • The CAREER award is one of the NSF's most prestigious honors for early-career faculty, recognizing outstanding scientists and engineers at the start of their careers.
  • Odeyomi's research on federated learning has shown promise, but it faces significant challenges related to fairness, communication, and privacy.
  • The project is expected to establish rigorous mathematical foundations and share open-source implementations to ensure reproducibility.
  • Partnerships with industry are expected to contribute to technological advancement and economic growth through the translation of the research into real-world applications.

Sources:

  • [North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services news release]