⚠️ IMPORTANT UPDATE: The room has been changed to Ray Dolby Centre – Cluster Room.

EMPOWER 2026

Energy-Efficient Machine Learning for Performance-Optimized Wireless and Edge NetwoRks

Location Cambridge, United Kingdom
Dates June 25, 2026
Co-located with ACM MobiSys 2026

Welcome

Mobile and wireless networks are rapidly evolving into highly heterogeneous ecosystems that span smartphones, wearables, autonomous devices, and dense edge infrastructures. At the same time, the deep integration of artificial intelligence into these systems has triggered an emerging AI compute–energy crisis, where the computational, thermal, and energy demands of modern models increasingly exceed the capabilities of resource-constrained mobile and edge hardware.

EMPOWER 2026 brings together the machine learning and mobile systems communities to address this challenge.

Aim & Scope

EMPOWER 2026 bridges the gap between the machine learning community and the mobile systems community. We explore the full lifecycle of mobile intelligence, from AI for Networks to Systems for AI, spanning algorithmic innovation to real-world deployment.

Keynote Speaker

Mohammad Malekzadeh

Mohammad Malekzadeh

Principal Applied Scientist @ Microsoft | On-Device Machine Learning

In the Applied Sciences group at Microsoft, I work on on-device machine learning to improve efficiency and generalization of AI models deployed at the edge.

Previously, I was a Senior Research Scientist at Nokia Bell Labs, where I led the Device Intelligence team in the Pervasive Systems department. We developed machine learning solutions for private data and personal devices, to advance personalized healthcare applications through multimodal sensing and on-device machine learning. We prioritized multi-modality, data and compute efficiency, individual privacy, and personalization to drive innovations that elevate human well-being. Explore our research papers and open-source code: CLEF, PaPaGei, CroSSL, PRIMUS, AdaBet, SoundCollage, Centaur, and Salted DNNs.

Before that, I was a Research Associate at Imperial College London, collaborating with Prof. Deniz Gunduz on Privacy-Preserving and Trustworthy Machine Learning. I earned my PhD in Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London while concurrently holding a Research Assistant position at Imperial College London. I had the opportunity to work with Prof. Hamed Haddadi, Dr. Richard G. Clegg, and Prof. Andrea Cavallaro. My PhD research focused on developing machine learning algorithms for privacy-preserving personal data analytics, particularly for data captured by mobile and wearable devices. During my PhD, I also interned at Brave Software Research, where I explored privacy-preserving techniques to enhance content personalization.

Workshop Program

09:00 – 09:05

Opening Remarks

09:05 – 09:45
Keynote Presentation

On-Device Machine Learning

Dr. Mohammad Malekzadeh (Principal Applied Scientist @ Microsoft)

Technical Session I

09:45 – 10:00

Lightweight Self-Protection for IoT Sensor Networks: Defending Against Membership Inference Attacks

Presenter: Yuqing Zhang

10:00 – 10:15

StressSense: Multimodal Stress Detection for Wearables using Early and Late Fusion

Presenter: Dr. Sujata Pal

10:15 – 10:30

Edge-Intelligence for Environmental Anomaly Detection: Transitioning from Traditional Deep Learning to Reservoir Computing

Presenter: Dr. Matteo Mendula

10:30 – 11:00
Coffee Break

Technical Session II

11:00 – 11:15

Juggler: Accuracy v/s Efficiency - Close View on Heterogeneous Embedded Edge ML Serving

Presenter: Dr. Tomasz Szydlo

11:15 – 11:30

OCEAN: Oil-spill Detection using Clustering and Energy-aware Artificial Protozoa Optimizer in Underwater Sensor Networks

Presenter: Dr. Sandeep Verma

11:30 – 11:45

Benchmarking 3D-CNN and CSNN Performance for Video Classification

Presenter: Diana Rune

11:45 – 11:50

Closing

12:00 – 13:00
🍽️ Lunch Break

Important Dates

Event Date
Submission Deadline April 02, 2026 April 15, 2026 (AoE)
Notification of Acceptance April 20, 2026 April 25, 2026 (AoE)
Camera-Ready Deadline April 27, 2026 April 30, 2026 (AoE)
Workshop Date June 25, 2026

(AoE = Anywhere on Earth)