Personal profile
Biography
Blesson Varghese is Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. He directs the Edge Computing Hub funded by Rakuten, Japan, and leads research on the UKRI-funded Edge AI Hub.
He was the recipient of the 2021 IEEE Rising Star Award and a Royal Society industry fellowship to British Telecoms plc, UK. His research interests are in developing large-scale distributed systems spanning the cloud and the edge of the network and has academic, industry and consulting experience in multiple continents.
He has featured in 'Clouded', a documentary on the cloud produced by Hewlett Packard and VMWare, and has interviewed on broadcast media.
Find more information on his personal homepage or Google Scholar profile.
Research overview
My research focuses on addressing challenges in developing large-scale distributed systems, specifically those encompassing the cloud and the edge of the network. My current interests are in Edge AI systems. methods and architectures.
Teaching activity
I teach CS5052: Data-Intensive Systems and CS5939: Data-Driven Systems, both of which focus on the design of large-scale distributed systems spanning the cloud and the edge.
I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate projects.
Profile Keywords
Distributed systems, Cloud/Edge computing, EdgeAI/ML
External positions
Honorary faculty member, Queen's University Belfast
Feb 2022 → …
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
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SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure -
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
Fingerprint
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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FedFreeze: a dual-phase layer freezing framework for federated learning
Wu, D., Wong, L. & Varghese, B., Apr 2026, In: Future Generation Computer Systems. 177, p. 1-14 14 p., 108250.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
FedOptima: optimizing resource utilization in federated learning
Zhang, Z., Wong, L. & Varghese, B., 1 Oct 2026, In: Future Generation Computer Systems. 183, 15 p., 108551.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
Mosaic: composite projection pruning for resource-efficient LLMs
Eccles, B. J., Wong, L. & Varghese, B., Feb 2026, In: Future Generation Computer Systems. 175, p. 1-15 15 p., 108056.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
EMO: Edge Model Overlays to scale model size in federated learning
Wu, D., He, W., Feng, W., Wen, Z., Qian, B. & Varghese, B., 21 Jul 2025, p. 1-6. 6 p.Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › peer-review
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InferEdge: characterizing edge inference performance
Antar, G. O. K. & Varghese, B., 31 Dec 2025, Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM international conference on utility and cloud computing (UCC 2025). New York: ACM, 10 p. 2Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
Open AccessFile
Datasets
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FedFly
Varghese, B. (Creator) & Ullah, R. (Creator), GitHub, 2021
https://github.com/qub-blesson/FedFly
Dataset: Software
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FedAdapt
Varghese, B. (Creator) & Ullah, R. (Creator), GitHub, 2021
https://github.com/qub-blesson/FedAdapt
Dataset: Software
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DNNShifter: an efficient DNN pruning system for edge computing (code)
Varghese, B. (Creator), GitHub, 2023
https://github.com/blessonvar/DNNShifter
Dataset: Software
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Enabling privacy-aware interoperable and quality IoT data sharing with context (code)
Varghese, B. (Creator), GitHub, 2024
https://github.com/tekrajchhetri/secure-interoperable-data-sharing
Dataset: Software
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PiPar: Pipeline parallelism for collaborative machine Learning (code)
Zhang, Z. (Creator) & Varghese, B. (Creator), GitHub, 2024
https://github.com/blessonvar/PipeLearn
Dataset: Software
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Achieving Maximum Performance: CloudBench: Achieving Maximum Performance and Saving Costs on the Cloud
Barker, A. (PI) & Varghese, B. (CoI)
1/06/14 → 31/08/15
Project: Standard
Activities
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Doors Open @ Computer Science 2024
Hoffmann, R. (Chair of organising committee), Ross, K. (Member of organising committee), Halite, A. (Participant), Mann, A. (Participant), Dearle, A. (Participant), Banks, A. (Participant), Lin, A. (Participant), Boyce, A. (Participant), Manataki, A. (Participant), Singh, A. (Participant), Huang, A. (Participant), Eccles, B. J. (Participant), Claydon, B. (Participant), Varghese, B. (Participant), Clues, C. (Participant), Naughton, C. (Participant), Brown, C. M. (Participant), Myles, C. G. G. (Participant), Kennedy, D. (Participant), Morrison, D. (Participant), Saikumar, D. (Participant), Balasubramaniam, D. (Participant), Brady, E. C. (Participant), Jenkins, E. (Participant), Spillane, E. (Participant), Leitner, F. (Participant), Haywood, G. T. (Participant), Rasheed, H. (Participant), Waller, J. (Participant), Herbert, J. (Participant), Espasa Arxer, J. (Participant), Williamson, J. (Participant), Loughney, J. (Participant), Zhang, J. (Participant), Wang, R. (Participant), Garriock, K. (Participant), Davies, K. (Participant), Clarke, L. (Participant), Laverty, L. (Participant), Andrei, M. (Participant), Young, M. (Participant), Chang, M. S. (Participant), Martin, N. (Participant), Dewally, N. (Participant), Akgun, O. (Participant), Ng, P. (Participant), Connor, R. (Participant), Letham, R. (Participant), Kirkpatrick, R. (Participant), McQuistin, S. (Participant), Yuan, V. (Participant), Tronciu, V. (Participant), Law, Y. N. (Participant) & Zhang, Y. (Participant)
11 Apr 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a public festival/exhibition/event
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Doors Open @ Computer Science 2023
Hoffmann, R. (Chair of organising committee), Ross, K. (Member of organising committee), Boyd, K. M. (Member of organising committee), Miller, A. H. D. (Participant), Miguel, A. R. (Participant), Varghese, B. (Participant), Brown, C. M. (Participant), Jefferson, C. A. (Participant), Harris-Birtill, D. C. C. (Participant), Balasubramaniam, D. (Participant), Brady, E. C. (Participant), Kirby, G. N. C. (Participant), Gent, I. P. (Participant), Jacques, J. T. (Participant), Espasa Arxer, J. (Participant), Ye, J. (Participant), Terzic, K. (Participant), Fang, L. (Participant), Nederhof, M. J. (Participant), Young, M. (Participant), Dang, N. T. T. (Participant), Konovalov, O. (Participant), Akgun, O. (Participant), Connor, R. (Participant), Dearle, A. (Participant), Filgueira, R. (Participant), Zhu, X. (Participant), Bhatti, S. (Participant), Dobson, S. A. (Participant), Mann, P. S. (Participant), Sarkar, S. (Participant), Kelsey, T. (Participant) & Spink, T. (Participant)
11 Apr 2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a public festival/exhibition/event
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Machine Learning on the Edge - Challenges, Opportunities and Solutions
Varghese, B. (Speaker)
7 Jun 2022Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
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22nd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing
Varghese, B. (Member of programme committee)
2022Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a conference
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28th International European Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing
Varghese, B. (Member of programme committee)
2022Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a conference
Prizes
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Best (Student) Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Communications, 2022
Majeed, A. A. (Recipient), Kilpatrick, P. (Recipient), Spence, I. (Recipient) & Varghese, B. (Recipient), 2022
Prize: National/international honour
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Finalist Team at the GSMA Mobile World Congress
Varghese, B. (Recipient), 2019
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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IEEE Technical Committee on the Internet Rising Star Award
Varghese, B. (Recipient), 2021
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Royal Society Short Industry Fellowship
Varghese, B. (Recipient), 2020
Prize: Election to learned society
Press/Media
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Tech for Innovation: The Technology Accelerating Our Digital World (Video Series)
16/06/22
3 Media contributions
Press/Media: Relating to Research
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Meet the computer that must survive ‘the shake, rattle, and roll’ of a space launch
10/03/21
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Relating to Research
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Edge computing may hold the key to a faster, cheaper, more sustainable internet
12/02/21
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Relating to Research