On October 9th, Jingjing Zheng successfully defended his Ph.D thesis entitled "Resource Allocation, Poisoning Attacks and Defense Strategies in Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning", supervised by Dr. Kai Li, and co-supervised by Dr. Luís Almeida and Dr. Eduardo Tovar, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal.

• Dr. Nuno Fidalgo (FEUP, examination committee Chair);
  

• Dr. Luís Almeida (FEUP, co-supervisor);

• Dr. Eduardo Tovar (ISEP, co-supervisor);

• Dr. Mohsen Guizani (MBZUAI, UAE, examiner);

• Dr. Susana Sargento (UA, examiner);

• Dr. Ana Aguiar (FEUP, examiner)

• Dr. Kai Li (ISEP, supervisor)

Jingjing Zheng was born in 1991 in Hubei, China. From a very young age he showed enormously passionate about computers and mathematics. During his college years, he participated in China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling three times, and obtained the Second Prize in Jiangxi Province, the First Prize in Jiangxi Province, the Second Prize in the Nation, respectively. In 2015 he began to study Control Science and Engineering at the Guangdong University of Technology, where he had done the master thesis of Research on Resource Allocation and Multi-agent Co-optimization for Dynamic Heterogeneous Multi-core Processors, and having obtained a good result through peer reviews. After that he rceived the M.S.degree from Guangdong University of Technology, China, in June 2018. Currently his research interests are in Real Time Embedded Systems, Multi-core processors and Optimization Algorithm.

 On July 25th, Ishfaq Hussain successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Improving the analysis techniques for mixed-criticality multicore systems and controller area networks by leveraging periodic load patterns", supervised by Dr. Muhammad Ali Awan, and co-supervised by Dr. Pedro Souto and Dr. Konstantinos Bletsas, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal.

The PhD examination committee was composed of:

• Dr. José Nuno Moura Marques Fidalgo, Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (president);
• Dr. Rodolfo Pellizzoni, Associate Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Waterloo, Canada;
• Dr. Gerhard Fohler, Full Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Denmark;
• Dr. Muhammad Ali Awan, Senior Engineer at Airbus Defense and Space (Advisor);

• Dr. Mário Jorge Rodrigues de Sousa, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto

Ishfaq's thesis was our third successful PhD thesis defense of the year and reinforces our continued dedication to supporting and guiding our PhD students throughout their academic journey