Jiarong Yang

Jiarong Yang, Yuan Liu, Rahif Kassab

Distributed Stein Variational Gradient Descent (DSVGD) is a non-parametric distributed learning framework for federated Bayesian learning, where multiple clients jointly train a machine learning model by communicating a number of non-random and interacting particles with the server. Since communication resources are limited, selecting the clients with most informative local learning updates can improve the model convergence and communication efficiency. In this paper, we propose two selection schemes for DSVGD based on Kernelized Stein Discrepancy (KSD) and Hilbert Inner Product (HIP). We derive the upper bound on the decrease of the global free energy per iteration for both schemes, which is then minimized to speed up the model convergence. We evaluate and compare our schemes with conventional schemes in terms of model accuracy, convergence speed, and stability using various learning tasks and datasets.

Florin-Alexandru Vasluianu, Tim Seizinger, Zhuyun Zhou et al.

This work examines the findings of the NTIRE 2025 Shadow Removal Challenge. A total of 306 participants have registered, with 17 teams successfully submitting their solutions during the final evaluation phase. Following the last two editions, this challenge had two evaluation tracks: one focusing on reconstruction fidelity and the other on visual perception through a user study. Both tracks were evaluated with images from the WSRD+ dataset, simulating interactions between self- and cast-shadows with a large number of diverse objects, textures, and materials.

Jiarong Yang, Yuan Liu

Split Federated Learning (SFL) is a distributed machine learning framework which strategically divides the learning process between a server and clients and collaboratively trains a shared model by aggregating local models updated based on data from distributed clients. However, data heterogeneity and partial client participation result in label distribution skew, which severely degrades the learning performance. To address this issue, we propose SFL with Concatenated Activations and Logit Adjustments (SCALA). Specifically, the activations from the client-side models are concatenated as the input of the server-side model so as to centrally adjust label distribution across different clients, and logit adjustments of loss functions on both server-side and client-side models are performed to deal with the label distribution variation across different subsets of participating clients. Theoretical analysis and experimental results verify the superiority of the proposed SCALA on public datasets.