Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Amin Aminifar received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway, in 2022. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Computer Engineering (ZITI), Heidelberg University, Germany. In 2024, he was an academic guest at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. In addition to serving as a committee member and reviewer for several conferences and journals, he is an Associate Editor of the ACM Computing Surveys. His research interests include privacy-preserving federated learning, machine learning on resource-constrained platforms, and the application of machine learning in the healthcare domain.

Research Interests

  • Privacy-preserving federated learning and distributed machine learning
  • Machine learning in resource-constrained devices
  • Machine learning in the healthcare domain

Publications

  1. Amin Aminifar, Jonathan Dan and David Atienza
    Federated Learning with Patient-Annotated Data in Epileptic Seizure Detection
    International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), , 2025
    @inproceedings{aminifar2025federated,
      title = {Federated Learning with Patient-Annotated Data in Epileptic Seizure Detection},
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Dan, Jonathan and Atienza, David},
      booktitle = {International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)},
      pages = {},
      year = {2025},
      organization = {IEEE}
    }
    
  2. Anahita Baninajjar, Amin Aminifar, Kamran Hosseini, Amir Aminifar and Ahmed Rezine
    Robustness and Privacy Interplay in Patient Membership Inference
    International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), , 2025
    @inproceedings{baninajjar2025robustness,
      title = {Robustness and Privacy Interplay in Patient Membership Inference},
      author = {Baninajjar, Anahita and Aminifar, Amin and Hosseini, Kamran and Aminifar, Amir and Rezine, Ahmed},
      booktitle = {International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)},
      pages = {},
      year = {2025},
      organization = {IEEE}
    }
    
  3. Soheil Khooyooz, Vimala Bauer, Anice Jahanjoo, Mostafa Haghi, Amin Aminifar and Nima TaheriNejad
    IDNoise: Resource-Aware Machine Learning-Based Noise and SNR Detection in Electrocardiogram Signals
    47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), , 2025
    @inproceedings{khooyooz2025idNoise,
      title = {IDNoise: Resource-Aware Machine Learning-Based Noise and SNR Detection in Electrocardiogram Signals},
      author = {Khooyooz, Soheil and Bauer, Vimala and Jahanjoo, Anice and Haghi, Mostafa and Aminifar, Amin and TaheriNejad, Nima},
      booktitle = {47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)},
      pages = {},
      year = {2025},
      organization = {IEEE}
    }
    
  4. Azra Abtahi, Amin Aminifar and Amir Aminifar
    Privacy-Preserving Federated Interpretability
    2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), 7592-7601, 2024
    @inproceedings{fahliani2024privacy,
      author = {Abtahi, Azra and Aminifar, Amin and Aminifar, Amir},
      booktitle = {2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData)},
      title = {Privacy-Preserving Federated Interpretability},
      year = {2024},
      pages = {7592-7601},
      doi = {10.1109/BigData62323.2024.10825590},
    }
    
  5. Amin Aminifar, Matin Shokri and Amir Aminifar
    Privacy-Preserving Edge Federated Learning for Intelligent Mobile-Health systems
    Future Generation Computer Systems, 161, 625–637, 2024
    @article{DBLP:journals/fgcs/AminifarSA24,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Shokri, Matin and Aminifar, Amir},
      title = {Privacy-Preserving Edge Federated Learning for Intelligent Mobile-Health
                        systems},
      journal = {Future Generation Computer Systems},
      volume = {161},
      pages = {625--637},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2024.07.035}
      doi = {10.1016/J.FUTURE.2024.07.035},
    }
    
  6. Amin Aminifar, Baichuan Huang, Azra Abtahi and Amir Aminifar
    LightFF: Lightweight Inference for Forward-Forward Algorithm
    27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI-2024, 392, 1728–1735, IOS Press, 2024
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ecai/AminifarHAA24,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Huang, Baichuan and Abtahi, Azra and Aminifar, Amir},
      title = {LightFF: Lightweight Inference for Forward-Forward Algorithm},
      booktitle = {27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI-2024},
      volume = {392},
      pages = {1728--1735},
      publisher = {{IOS} Press},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA240682}
      doi = {10.3233/FAIA240682},
    }
    
  7. Amin Aminifar, Soheil Khooyooz, Anice Jahanjoo, Salar Shakibhamedan and Nima TaheriNejad
    RecogNoise: Machine-Learning-Based Recognition of Noisy Segments in Electrocardiogram Signals
    IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2024, Singapore, May 19-22, 2024, 1–5, IEEE, 2024
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/iscas/AminifarKJST24,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Khooyooz, Soheil and Jahanjoo, Anice and Shakibhamedan, Salar and TaheriNejad, Nima},
      title = {RecogNoise: Machine-Learning-Based Recognition of Noisy Segments in
                        Electrocardiogram Signals},
      booktitle = {{IEEE} International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, {ISCAS} 2024,
                        Singapore, May 19-22, 2024},
      pages = {1--5},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCAS58744.2024.10558670}
      doi = {10.1109/ISCAS58744.2024.10558670},
    }
    
  8. Anice Jahanjoo, Nima TaheriNejad and Amin Aminifar
    High-Accuracy Stress Detection Using Wrist-Worn PPG Sensors
    IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2024, Singapore, May 19-22, 2024, 1–5, IEEE, 2024
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/iscas/JahanjooTA24,
      author = {Jahanjoo, Anice and TaheriNejad, Nima and Aminifar, Amin},
      title = {High-Accuracy Stress Detection Using Wrist-Worn {PPG} Sensors},
      booktitle = {{IEEE} International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, {ISCAS} 2024,
                        Singapore, May 19-22, 2024},
      pages = {1--5},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCAS58744.2024.10558012}
      doi = {10.1109/ISCAS58744.2024.10558012},
    }
    
  9. Salar Shakibhamedan, Anice Jahanjoo, Amin Aminifar, Nima Amirafshar, Nima TaheriNejad and Axel Jantsch
    An Analytical Approach to Enhancing DNN Efficiency and Accuracy Using Approximate Multiplication
    2nd Workshop on Advancing Neural Network Training: Computational Efficiency, Scalability, and Resource Optimization (WANT@ ICML 2024)
    @inproceedings{shakibhamedan2024analytical,
      title = {An Analytical Approach to Enhancing DNN Efficiency and Accuracy Using Approximate Multiplication},
      author = {Shakibhamedan, Salar and Jahanjoo, Anice and Aminifar, Amin and Amirafshar, Nima and TaheriNejad, Nima and Jantsch, Axel},
      booktitle = {2nd Workshop on Advancing Neural Network Training: Computational Efficiency, Scalability, and Resource Optimization (WANT@ ICML 2024)},
      url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=rver7enVfY}
    }
    
  10. Soheil Khooyooz, Anice Jahanjoo, Amin Aminifar and Nima TaheriNejad
    A Novel Machine-Learning-Based Noise Detection Method for Photoplethysmography Signals
    46th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine Biology Society (EMBC). IEEE, 2024
    @inproceedings{khooyooz2024novel,
      title = {A Novel Machine-Learning-Based Noise Detection Method for Photoplethysmography Signals},
      author = {Khooyooz, Soheil and Jahanjoo, Anice and Aminifar, Amin and TaheriNejad, Nima},
      booktitle = {46th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine Biology Society (EMBC). IEEE},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC53108.2024.10782126}
      doi = {10.1109/EMBC53108.2024.10782126},
    }
    
  11. Salar Shakibhamedan, Amin Aminifar, Luke Vassallo and Nima TaheriNejad
    Harnessing Approximate Computing for Machine Learning
    IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, ISVLSI 2024, Knoxville, TN, USA, July 1-3, 2024, 585–591, IEEE, 2024
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/isvlsi/ShakibhamedanAVT24,
      author = {Shakibhamedan, Salar and Aminifar, Amin and Vassallo, Luke and TaheriNejad, Nima},
      title = {Harnessing Approximate Computing for Machine Learning},
      booktitle = {{IEEE} Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, {ISVLSI} 2024, Knoxville,
                        TN, USA, July 1-3, 2024},
      pages = {585--591},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISVLSI61997.2024.00110}
      doi = {10.1109/ISVLSI61997.2024.00110},
    }
    
  12. Amin Aminifar, Baichuan Huang, Azra Abtahi and Amir Aminifar
    Lightweight Inference for Forward-Forward Algorithm
    CoRR, abs/2404.05241, 2024
    @article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-2404-05241,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Huang, Baichuan and Abtahi, Azra and Aminifar, Amir},
      title = {Lightweight Inference for Forward-Forward Algorithm},
      journal = {CoRR},
      volume = {abs/2404.05241},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.05241}
      doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2404.05241},
      eprinttype = {arXiv},
      eprint = {2404.05241},
    }
    
  13. Amin Aminifar, Matin Shokri and Amir Aminifar
    Privacy-Preserving Edge Federated Learning for Intelligent Mobile-Health Systems
    CoRR, abs/2405.05611, 2024
    @article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-2405-05611,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Shokri, Matin and Aminifar, Amir},
      title = {Privacy-Preserving Edge Federated Learning for Intelligent Mobile-Health
                        Systems},
      journal = {CoRR},
      volume = {abs/2405.05611},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2405.05611}
      doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2405.05611},
      eprinttype = {arXiv},
      eprint = {2405.05611},
    }
    
  14. Peter Traunmuller, Anice Jahanjoo, Soheil Khooyooz, Amin Aminifar and Nima TaheriNejad
    Wearable Healthcare Devices for Monitoring Stress and Attention Level in Workplace Environments
    CoRR, abs/2406.05813, 2024
    @article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-2406-05813,
      author = {Traunmuller, Peter and Jahanjoo, Anice and Khooyooz, Soheil and Aminifar, Amin and TaheriNejad, Nima},
      title = {Wearable Healthcare Devices for Monitoring Stress and Attention Level
                        in Workplace Environments},
      journal = {CoRR},
      volume = {abs/2406.05813},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.05813}
      doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2406.05813},
      eprinttype = {arXiv},
      eprint = {2406.05813},
    }
    
  15. Salar Shakibhamedan, Amin Aminifar, Nima Taherinejad and Axel Jantsch
    Ease: Energy optimization through adaptation–a review of runtime energy-aware approximate deep learning algorithms
    Authorea Preprints, Authorea, 2024
    @article{shakibhamedan2024ease,
      title = {Ease: Energy optimization through adaptation--a review of runtime energy-aware approximate deep learning algorithms},
      author = {Shakibhamedan, Salar and Aminifar, Amin and Taherinejad, Nima and Jantsch, Axel},
      journal = {Authorea Preprints},
      year = {2024},
      publisher = {Authorea},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.170723230.09169589/v1}
      doi = {10.36227/techrxiv.170723230.09169589/v1},
    }
    
  16. Amin Aminifar, Matin Shokri, Fazle Rabbi, Violet Ka I Pun and Yngve Lamo
    Extremely Randomized Trees With Privacy Preservation for Distributed Structured Health Data
    IEEE Access, 10, 6010–6027, 2022
    @article{DBLP:journals/access/AminifarSRPL22,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Shokri, Matin and Rabbi, Fazle and Pun, Violet Ka I and Lamo, Yngve},
      title = {Extremely Randomized Trees With Privacy Preservation for Distributed
                        Structured Health Data},
      journal = {{IEEE} Access},
      volume = {10},
      pages = {6010--6027},
      year = {2022},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3141709}
      doi = {10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3141709},
    }
    
  17. Farnaz Forooghifar, Amin Aminifar, Tomás Teijeiro, Amir Aminifar, Jesper Jeppesen, Sándor Beniczky and David Atienza
    Self-Aware Anomaly-Detection for Epilepsy Monitoring on Low-Power Wearable Electrocardiographic Devices
    3rd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems, AICAS 2021, Washington, DC, USA, June 6-9, 2021, 1–4, IEEE, 2021
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/aicas/ForooghifarATAJ21,
      author = {Forooghifar, Farnaz and Aminifar, Amin and Teijeiro, Tom{\'{a}}s and Aminifar, Amir and Jeppesen, Jesper and Beniczky, S{\'{a}}ndor and Atienza, David},
      title = {Self-Aware Anomaly-Detection for Epilepsy Monitoring on Low-Power
                        Wearable Electrocardiographic Devices},
      booktitle = {3rd {IEEE} International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits
                        and Systems, {AICAS} 2021, Washington, DC, USA, June 6-9, 2021},
      pages = {1--4},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/AICAS51828.2021.9458555}
      doi = {10.1109/AICAS51828.2021.9458555},
    }
    
  18. Amin Aminifar, Fazle Rabbi, Violet Ka I Pun and Yngve Lamo
    Diversity-Aware Anonymization for Structured Health Data
    43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society, EMBC 2021, Mexico, November 1-5, 2021, 2148–2154, IEEE, 2021
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/embc/AminifarRPL21,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Rabbi, Fazle and Pun, Violet Ka I and Lamo, Yngve},
      title = {Diversity-Aware Anonymization for Structured Health Data},
      booktitle = {43rd Annual International Conference of the {IEEE} Engineering in
                        Medicine {\&} Biology Society, {EMBC} 2021, Mexico, November 1-5,
                        2021},
      pages = {2148--2154},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9629918}
      doi = {10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9629918},
    }
    
  19. Amin Aminifar, Fazle Rabbi, Violet Ka I Pun and Yngve Lamo
    Monitoring Motor Activity Data for Detecting Patients’ Depression Using Data Augmentation and Privacy-Preserving Distributed Learning
    43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society, EMBC 2021, Mexico, November 1-5, 2021, 2163–2169, IEEE, 2021
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/embc/AminifarRPL21a,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Rabbi, Fazle and Pun, Violet Ka I and Lamo, Yngve},
      title = {Monitoring Motor Activity Data for Detecting Patients' Depression
                        Using Data Augmentation and Privacy-Preserving Distributed Learning},
      booktitle = {43rd Annual International Conference of the {IEEE} Engineering in
                        Medicine {\&} Biology Society, {EMBC} 2021, Mexico, November 1-5,
                        2021},
      pages = {2163--2169},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9630592}
      doi = {10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9630592},
    }
    
  20. Amin Aminifar, Fazle Rabbi and Yngve Lamo
    Scalable Privacy-Preserving Distributed Extremely Randomized Trees for Structured Data With Multiple Colluding Parties
    IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2021, Toronto, ON, Canada, June 6-11, 2021, 2655–2659, IEEE, 2021
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/icassp/Aminifar0L21,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Rabbi, Fazle and Lamo, Yngve},
      title = {Scalable Privacy-Preserving Distributed Extremely Randomized Trees
                        for Structured Data With Multiple Colluding Parties},
      booktitle = {{IEEE} International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing,
                        {ICASSP} 2021, Toronto, ON, Canada, June 6-11, 2021},
      pages = {2655--2659},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9413632}
      doi = {10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9413632},
    }
    
  21. Amin Aminifar, Fazle Rabbi, Ka I Pun and Yngve Lamo
    Privacy preserving distributed extremely randomized trees
    SAC ’21: The 36th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing, Virtual Event, Republic of Korea, March 22-26, 2021, 1102–1105, ACM, 2021
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/sac/Aminifar0PL21,
      author = {Aminifar, Amin and Rabbi, Fazle and Pun, Ka I and Lamo, Yngve},
      editor = {Hung, Chih{-}Cheng and Hong, Jiman and Bechini, Alessio and Song, Eunjee},
      title = {Privacy preserving distributed extremely randomized trees},
      booktitle = {{SAC} '21: The 36th {ACM/SIGAPP} Symposium on Applied Computing, Virtual
                        Event, Republic of Korea, March 22-26, 2021},
      pages = {1102--1105},
      publisher = {{ACM}},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3412841.3442110}
      doi = {10.1145/3412841.3442110},
    }
    
  22. Matin Shokri, Seyed Hossein Khasteh and Amin Aminifar
    Adaptive Fuzzy Watkins: A New Adaptive Approach for Eligibility Traces in Reinforcement Learning
    Int. J. Fuzzy Syst., 21(5), 1443–1454, 2019
    @article{DBLP:journals/ijfs/ShokriKA19,
      author = {Shokri, Matin and Khasteh, Seyed Hossein and Aminifar, Amin},
      title = {Adaptive Fuzzy Watkins: {A} New Adaptive Approach for Eligibility
                        Traces in Reinforcement Learning},
      journal = {Int. J. Fuzzy Syst.},
      volume = {21},
      number = {5},
      pages = {1443--1454},
      year = {2019},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s40815-019-00633-x}
      doi = {10.1007/S40815-019-00633-X},
    }
    
  23. Dionisije Sopic, Amin Aminifar, Amir Aminifar and David Atienza
    Real-Time Event-Driven Classification Technique for Early Detection and Prevention of Myocardial Infarction on Wearable Systems
    IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., 12(5), 982–992, 2018
    @article{DBLP:journals/tbcas/SopicAAA18,
      author = {Sopic, Dionisije and Aminifar, Amin and Aminifar, Amir and Atienza, David},
      title = {Real-Time Event-Driven Classification Technique for Early Detection
                        and Prevention of Myocardial Infarction on Wearable Systems},
      journal = {{IEEE} Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst.},
      volume = {12},
      number = {5},
      pages = {982--992},
      year = {2018},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/TBCAS.2018.2848477}
      doi = {10.1109/TBCAS.2018.2848477},
    }
    
  24. Dionisije Sopic, Amin Aminifar, Amir Aminifar and David Atienza
    Real-time classification technique for early detection and prevention of myocardial infarction on wearable devices
    IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference, BioCAS 2017, Torino, Italy, October 19-21, 2017, 1–4, IEEE, 2017
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/biocas/SopicAAA17,
      author = {Sopic, Dionisije and Aminifar, Amin and Aminifar, Amir and Atienza, David},
      title = {Real-time classification technique for early detection and prevention
                        of myocardial infarction on wearable devices},
      booktitle = {{IEEE} Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference, BioCAS 2017, Torino,
                        Italy, October 19-21, 2017},
      pages = {1--4},
      publisher = {{IEEE}},
      year = {2017},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/BIOCAS.2017.8325140}
      doi = {10.1109/BIOCAS.2017.8325140},
    }
    

Teaching

  • Responsible for Machine Learning Module (half of the course) in Biomedical Signal Processing and Machine Learning, Summer Semester 2025
  • Responsible for Machine Learning Module (half of the course) in Biomedical Signal Processing and Machine Learning, Summer Semester 2024
  • Responsible for Machine Learning Module Lectures in Emerging Computing Paradigms Graduate Course, Winter Semester 2023

Consultation Hours

I am available for discussion every Friday from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Please schedule an appointment in advance.