Syed Zawad

Researcher, International Business Machines

PhD student, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Nevada, Reno

Joined

May 2024

Names

Syed Zawad (Preferred)

Emails

****@nevada.unr.edu (Confirmed)

****@ibm.com (Confirmed)

Personal Links

Career & Education History

Researcher

International Business Machines (ibm.com)

2023 – Present

PhD student

University of Nevada, Reno, University of Nevada, Reno (nevada.unr.edu)

2017 – Present

MS student

North Carolina State University (ncsu.edu)

2016 – 2017

Advisors, Relations & Conflicts

No relations added

Expertise

High-Performance Computing

Present

Cloud Computing

Present

Federated Learning

Present

Agentic

Present

LLM

Present

Publications

GneissWeb: Preparing High Quality Data for LLMs at Scale
Hajar Emami Gohari, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Yousaf Shah, Constantin M Adam, Abdulhamid Adebayo, Praneet Adusumilli, Farhan Ahmed, Nathalie Baracaldo, Santosh Subhashrao Borse, Yuan-Chi Chang, Xuan-Hong Dang, Nirmit Desai, Revital Eres, Ran Iwamoto, Alexei A. Karve, Yan Koyfman, Wei-Han Lee, Changchang Liu, Boris Lublinsky, Takuya Ohko et al. (12 additional authors not shown)
- ICLR 2026 Poster
- Readers: Everyone
PEML: Parameter-efficient Multi-Task Learning with Optimized Continuous Prompts
Anjir Ahmed Chowdhury, Syed Zawad, Xiaolong Ma, Xu Dong, Feng Yan
- Submitted to ICLR 2026
- Readers: Everyone
Demystifying Latent Forgetting in Federated Learning
Mina Yazdani Ghooshchi, Syed Zawad, Feng Yan
- Submitted to ICLR 2026
- Readers: Everyone
When Data is the Algorithm: A Systematic Study and Curation of Preference Optimization Datasets
Aladin Djuhera, Farhan Ahmed, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Syed Zawad, Heiko Ludwig, Holger Boche
- ICLR 2026 Poster
- Readers: Everyone
When Data is the Algorithm: A Systematic Study and Curation of Preference Optimization Datasets
Aladin Djuhera, Farhan Ahmed, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Syed Zawad, Heiko Ludwig, Holger Boche
- ARLET
- Readers: Everyone
SafeCOMM: Investigating Safety Degradation in Fine-Tuned Telecom Large Language Models
Aladin Djuhera, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Farhan Ahmed, Syed Zawad, Fernando Luiz Koch, Walid Saad, Holger Boche
- AI4NextG @ NeurIPS 25 Poster
- Readers: Everyone
Fixing It in Post: A Comparative Study of LLM Post-Training Data Quality and Model Performance
Aladin Djuhera, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Syed Zawad, Farhan Ahmed, Heiko Ludwig, Holger Boche
- NeurIPS 2025 Datasets and Benchmarks Track spotlight
- Readers: Everyone
SafeMERGE: Preserving Safety Alignment in Fine-Tuned Large Language Models via Selective Layer-Wise Model Merging
Aladin Djuhera, Swanand Kadhe, Farhan Ahmed, Syed Zawad, Holger Boche
- BuildingTrust
- Readers: Everyone
SafeMERGE: Preserving Safety Alignment in Fine-Tuned Large Language Models via Selective Layer-Wise Model Merging
Aladin Djuhera, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Farhan Ahmed, Syed Zawad, Holger Boche
- ICLR 2025 FM-Wild Workshop
- Readers: Everyone
Speed Up Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Environment: A Dynamic Tiering Approach
Seyed Mahmoud Sajjadi Mohammadabadi, Syed Zawad, Feng Yan, Lei Yang
- ICLR 2024 Conference Withdrawn Submission
- Readers: Everyone

View all 13 publications

Co-Authors

View all 50 co-authors