Christopher Brinton, PhD
The Elmore Associate Professor of of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Purdue University
Wednesday, September 3, 2025 | Seminar: 2pm | 230 A Davis Hall
Federated learning is a popular approach to distributing AI/ML modeling over the wireless edge. However, federated learning suffers from several inefficiencies when implemented over contemporary, large-scale networks, comprised of heterogeneous computing elements across the cloud-to-things continuum. To address this, fog learning has emerged as a new paradigm which emphasizes intrinsically in its design the heterogeneous node, network, and data properties encountered in many of today’s connected systems. An important thread of research in fog learning has been on understanding the role that ad hoc synchronization topologies among heterogeneous computing elements can play in elevating the achievable tradeoff between intelligence quality, resource efficiency, and privacy/security guarantees. In this talk, I will discuss recent results on the analysis of fog learning processes which give insights into the impact that local connectivity, model characteristics, and training update parameters have on fog learning performance metrics for consideration in 6G-and-beyond standards. Additionally, I will discuss the development of adaptive control methodologies that leverage such relationships for edge, fog, and cloud system orchestration.
Christopher G. Brinton is the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Purdue University. His research interest is at the intersection of networking, communications, and machine learning, specifically in fog/edge network intelligence, distributed machine learning, and AI/ML-inspired wireless network optimization.
Dr. Brinton is a recipient of five of the US top early career awards, from the National Science Foundation (CAREER), Office of Naval Research (YIP), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (YFA and Director’s Fellowship), and Air Force Office of Scientific Research (YIP), the IEEE Communication Society William Bennett Prize Best Paper Award, the Intel Rising Star Faculty Award, the Qualcomm Faculty Award, and roughly $20M in sponsored research projects as a PI or co-PI. He has also been awarded Purdue College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Awards in Early Career Research, Early Career Teaching, and Online Learning. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and previously was an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Brinton was the Associate Director of the EDGE Lab and a Lecturer of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. He also co-founded Zoomi Inc., a big data startup company that holds US Patents in machine learning for education. His book The Power of Networks: 6 Principles That Connect our Lives and associated Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) reached over 400,000 students. Dr. Brinton received the PhD (with honors) and MS Degrees from Princeton in 2016 and 2013, respectively, both in Electrical Engineering.