Md Anwar Hossen

Career Summary

Graduate student in Computer Science at Iowa State University, specializing in federated continual learning. My research focuses on federated and continual representation learning across heterogeneous data and model architectures by aligning and adapting knowledge representations to improve efficiency and scalability. My work develops representation-level and parameter-efficient methods that fine-tune hidden representations and continually adapt large language models without sharing full models or overwriting prior knowledge. I focus on challenges such as semantic misalignment, domain shift, catastrophic forgetting, and communication constraints to build scalable distributed AI systems.

Education

Research Experience

Professional Experience

Publications

1. Md Anwar Hossen, Fatema Siddika, Juan Pablo Muñoz, Tanya Roosta, and Ali Jannesari. “CRAFT: Forgetting-Aware Intervention-Based Adaptation for Continual Learning.” Under submission, 2026. (pre-print: arXiv:2605.05732)
2. Fatema Siddika, Md Anwar Hossen, Tanwi Mallick, and Ali Jannesari. “Sparse Subspace-to-Expert Sharing for Task-Agnostic Continual Learning.” Under submission, 2026. (pre-print: arXiv:2606.07500)
3. Md Anwar Hossen, Nathan Tallent, Luanzheng Guo, and Ali Jannesari. “SCOPE: Semantic Coresets using Orthogonal Projection Embeddings for Federated Learning.” Under submission, 2026. (pre-print: arXiv:2603.12976)
4. Md Anwar Hossen*, Fatema Siddika*, Juan Pablo Muñoz, Tanya Roosta, Anuj Sharma, and Ali Jannesari. “FedReFT: Federated Representation Fine-Tuning with All-But-Me Aggregation.” 19th Conf. of the European Chapter of the ACL (EACL), 2026. (*Equal contribution)
5. Fatema Siddika, Md Anwar Hossen, Wensheng Zhang, Anuj Sharma, Juan Pablo Muñoz, and Ali Jannesari. “Dual-Distilled Heterogeneous Federated Learning with Adaptive Margins for Trainable Global Prototypes.” 26th IEEE Int. Symp. on Cluster, Cloud, and Internet Computing (CCGrid), 2026. (pre-print: arXiv:2508.19009)
6. Md Anwar Hossen, Fatema Siddika, and Wensheng Zhang. “Fair Allocation of Bandwidth at Edge Servers for Concurrent Federated Learning Processes.” 10th Int. Conf. on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC), 2025.
7. Md Anwar Hossen, Rakib Bin Alamgir, Arman Ul Alam, Fatema Siddika, Shah Fahad Hossain, and Md. Shohel Arman. “A Web-Based Four-Tier Architecture using Reduced Feature-Based Neural Network Approach for Prediction of Student Performance.” Int. Conf. on Robotics, Electrical and Signal Processing Techniques (ICREST), 2021.
8. Md Anwar Hossen, Emran Hossain, Abdul Khalib Zahereel Ishwar, and Fatema Siddika. “Ensemble Method-Based Architecture using Random Forest Importance to Predict Employee Turnover.” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2021.
9. Md Anwar Hossen, Md. Shariful Islam, Nurhafizah Abu Talip Yusof, Md. Sakib Rahman, Fatema Siddika, Mostafijur Rahman, Sabira Khatun, Mohamad Shaiful Abdul Karim, and S. M. Hasan Mahmud. “Hybrid Sampling and Random Forest-Based Machine Learning Approach for Software Defect Prediction.” 5th Int. Conf. on Electrical, Control & Computer Engineering, 2019.
10. Md Anwar Hossen, Fatema Siddika, Tonmoy Kumar Chanda, and Touhid Bhuiyan. “A Comparison of Soft Computing Methods on Imbalanced Data.” Int. Conf. on Cyber Security and Computer Science (ICONCS), 2018.
11. Fatema Siddika, Md Anwar Hossen, and Sajeeb Saha. “Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 in Bangladesh: A Competent and Enhanced Approach.” 2nd Int. Conf. on Networking Systems and Security (NSysS), 2017.

Honors & Awards

• Best Research Poster, Computer Science, Iowa State University — 2023
• National Innovation Fund Grant (worth $3,500), ICT Division, Bangladesh — 2019–2020
• National Science and Technology Research Fellowship for MS, Bangladesh — 2016–2017
• Research Fellow, BdREN Summit, University Grants Commission, Bangladesh — 2016
• Honorable Mention, ACM ICPC Asia Regional Dhaka Site — 2013
• Runner-up, Code Warrior Challenge (National level), BASIS & ICT Division — 2014
• Reached Top 15, Therap Java Fest, Bangladesh — 2014

Professional Service

• Lead, Technical Session Organizing Committee, 2nd Int. Conf. on Cyber Security and Computer Science (DIU & Karabük University, Turkey) — 2020
• Administrative Coordinator, World Friends IT Volunteer Program, South Korea — 2019
• Mentor, IEEE Daffodil International University Student Branch — 2017–2019
• Chair, IEEE Jagannath University Student Branch — 2017
• Mentor and Judge, National Hackathon, ICT Division, Bangladesh — 2016

Teaching

Certifications