Mennan Selimi

Full Professor at SEEU. Senior Researcher at Max van der Stoel Institute.

About Me

I am a Full Professor at  South East European University (SEEU) and a Senior Researcher at the Max van der Stoel Institute (MVDSI), where I lead the Distributed Systems and Data Science Research Group (DSG). My work focuses on advancing decentralized cloud infrastructures and embedding machine learning into intelligent systems.

Before joining SEEU, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, contributing to the EU H2020 RIFE and UMOBILE projects within the Networking for Development Lab (N4D Lab)

I earned my PhD with Distinction and Honour as an EMJD-DC fellow at UPC BarcelonaTech and the University of Lisbon (IST). I have also had the privilege of gaining valuable research experience at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPS-SWS) and the Saarland University Graduate School of Computer Science.

My research interests span Federated Learning, scalable machine learning algorithms and designing solutions for resource-constrained platforms. I aim to apply my research to impactful use cases, such as environmental monitoring and healthcare prediction, focusing on translating academic innovations into practical solutions for intelligent and decentralized systems.

Education

Post-DocUPC BarcelonaTech (2019),
UPC Fellowship

Post-DocUniversity of Cambridge (2018),
University of Cambridge Fellowship

PhDUPC BarcelonaTech, (2017),
Instituto Superior Técnico, (2017),
Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Fellowship

MScSapienza University of Rome (2011),
Erasmus Mundus Master Fellowship

BScSouth East European University (2009),
SEEU Fellowship

News

  • May 2025: As part of WP2 of ChallengeEU, I will visit HSO (Offenburg) and FHNW (Basel) in the first week of June.
  • April 2025: Our paper “A Two-Board Design for Interconnected Intelligence in Tiny IoT” has been accepted for presentation at Expat’25, to be held in the exotic Faial Island, Portugal.
  • April 2025: Our students, Samir, Menan, Hamit and Agon took first place at the Global Innovation Challenge with their solar-powered air quality project. Congrats guys !
  • Apr 2025: We’re organizing the Air Pollution Exhibition on May 28–29 in Tetova with the University of Birmingham !
  • Mar 2025: Our paper on monitoring and querying LoRa Mesh Nodes has been accepted at the IEEE SAIA workshop in Bologna.
  • Mar 2025: Two new interns, Samir and Menan, have joined the DSG group to work on LoRa technology. Welcome guys !
  • Feb 2025: I will be conducting a short research stay at the University of Birmingham and the University of Cambridge in May 2025 !
  • Feb 2025: I will talk about our ongoing LLM work at the Smart City Zürich Festival on June 5, 2025—details soon !
  • Jan 2025: We have a new intern at DSG ! Welcome, Alba ! Alba will work on Tetova’s air pollution visualization platform.
  • Jan 2025: Hamit Kamberi joins the DSG group full-time to work on the Challenge EU project. Welcome Hamit !
  • Jan 2025: Our proposal for the Research England International Strategy and Partnership Fund, in partnership with the University of Birmingham, has been approved ! Stay tuned for updates ! 
  • Jan 2025: The Challenge EU project has been officially launched, with the kickoff meeting scheduled for 12th March 2025 in Offenburg (DE) and Basel (CH).
  • Dec 2024: As of today, I am promoted to Full Professor at SEEU. Five challenging and amazing years here have gone by so fast! 
  • Dec 2024: I was a guest on Arlinda Baftiu’s TV program, where I talked about my academic journey and challenges. Video here.
  • Dec 2024: Our journal paper, AdaptiveMesh: Adaptive Federated Learning for Resource-Constrained Wireless Environments, has just been published! Paper here.
  • Nov 2024: We’re looking for a technical/research assistant to join the Challenge EU project. Reach out if you’re interested!
  • Nov 2024: I will speak about the potential of LLMs at Smart City Zürich.
  • Oct 2024: A demo paper from our team has been accepted for presentation at ACM/IEEE SEC 2025 in Rome !
  • Oct 2024: I will be giving a talk on innovation and implementation of LLMs at Stadt Zürich from October 24th to 25th.
  • Sept 2024: Shqipe Salii has joined the DSG group and will be working on her PhD under my supervision ! Welcome Shqipe !
  • Sept 2024: I gave a talk at Prishtina Hackerspace – FLOSSK on the role of open source initiatives in our research.
  • July 2024: We are part of the Challenge EU alliance for the next 4 years. I am looking for motivated students and researchers to develop cutting-edge digital AI platform for 9 EU universities.
  • May 2024: My latest book, Wireless Community Networks: Deploying IoT Services with Micro-Clouds has just been published!
  • May 2024: Two papers accepted at the IEEE MECO 2024 conference. Congrats Nelum and Lamir!
  • Oct 2023: I’ve been appointed as one of the Program Committee Chairs for the upcoming DAIS conference scheduled to take place in Groningen from June 17th to June 21st, 2024 !
  • Sep 2023: Our paper “FederatedMesh: Collaborative Federated Learning for Medical Data Sharing in Mesh Networks” got accepted at CollaborateCom conference !
  • Aug 2023: I will be serving as the Program Committee for the ACM/IFIP Middleware Workshop on Middleware for Edge Computing (MiddleWEdge). Consider submitting a paper !
  • Jun 2023:  I contributed as an expert to the development of the National Development Strategy focused on Green and Digital Transformation !
  • May 2023:  Embarked on a visit to the University of Birmingham in the UK for the Air Quality Monitoring project !
  • May 2023: Presented our work on machine learning in healthcare at H2020 Smart4All General Assembly meeting in Lisbon, Portugal !
  • Feb 2023: First master thesis defence at the DSG group !  Lenart Ibraimi successfully defended his master thesis “Participatory Air Pollution Monitoring System Using Portable Low-cost Sensors”. Congrats Lenart !
  • Feb 2023: I conducted training sessions on Horizon Europe programme (Prishtina & ITP Prizren) organised by Edutask Institute and GIZ.
  • Oct 2022: Our paper entitled “Server-side Adaptive Federated Learning over Wireless Mesh Network” got accepted at ICITS’23 to be held in Peru !
  • Sep 2022: Two new students joined our group at MVDSI ! Lamir Shkurti (PhD candidate) and Leda Shaqiri (Master student) will be part of the DSG ! Welcome guys !
  • Jun 2022: Our paper “Designing a Double LoRa Connectivity for the Arduino Portenta H7” got accepted at IEEE LANMAN conference !
  • Apr 2022: Officially kick-started the project “Air Pollution and Human Mobility” supported by University of Birmingham and IOM !
  • Feb 2022: We are hiring a technical / research assistant to work with us on the air pollution monitoring project !
  • Nov 2021: We are the winners of the 9th H2020 Fed4Fire+ Open Call ! We are hiring a senior researcher to work with us at MVDSI ! Stay tuned for a news update !
  • Oct 2021: Two papers on Federated Machine Learning got accepted ! They will be presented at ACM/SIGHCI IoT 2021 conference in Switzerland and ICITS 2022 conference in Costa Rica !
  • Sep 2021: Together with the University of Birmingham (UK) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) we are kick-starting the project “Assessing the Nexus Between Air Pollution and Human Mobility in the City of Tetova” !
  • Aug 2021: Our work on Federated Learning got accepted at IEEE Globecom 2021 conference to be held in Madrid, Spain ! Congratulations Lenart !
  • Jul 2021: We were nominated and selected for the Elsevier FGCS Editor’s Choice Award for our journal paper on Multi-criteria Optimization in Edge Clouds !
  • Apr 2021: Nominated and selected in the Program Committee of Horizon Europe programme for North Macedonia !
  • Mar 2021: Our paper on “Multi-criteria Optimization in Edge Clouds” has been accpeted for publication in the Elsevier FGCS journal (Impact Factor: 7.187) ! Kudos to the team !