EFFEKT: Efficient Federated Knowledge Transfer to Foundation Models

[2608.08138] EFFEKT: Efficient Federated Knowledge Transfer to Foundation Models Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition arXiv:2608.08138 (cs) [Submitted on 8 Aug 2026] Title: EFFEKT: Efficient Federated Knowledge Transfer to Foundation Models Authors: Matteo Caligiuri , Francesco Barbato , Pietro Zanuttigh , Francesco Restuccia View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Recent data protection laws have accelerated the adoption of Federated Learning (FL) for privacy-preserving decentralized training. Nevertheless, increasing model sizes impose substantial computational demands on client devices, limiting FL applicability in resource-constrained settings. We introduce a novel multi-domain federated learning framework in which lightweight client-side proxy models collaborate with a server-side Foundation Model (FM) to learn new concepts without sharing private data. Our approach, EFFEKT, enables efficient server-side training of domain-specific LoRA adapters while preserving feature-space alignment between the FM and proxy extractors via novel bi-directional cross-distillation strategies. Experiments on multiple real-world datasets and deployments on low-power edge devices demonstrate improvements over state-of-the-art baselines in most considered domains while maintaining lightweight computation at the client side. Comments: 12 main content pages, 8 appendix pages; 3 main figures, 9 appendix figures; 8 main tables, 9 appendix tables; 1 main algorithm, 4 appendix algorithms; accepted at TMLR Subjects: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) ; Machine Learning (cs.LG) Cite as: arXiv:2608.08138 [cs.CV] (or arXiv:2608.08138v1 [cs.CV] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.08138 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: Transactions on Machine Learning Research (2026), ISSN 2835-8856 Submission history From: Francesco Barbato Ph.D. [ view email ] [v1] Sat, 8 Aug 2026 13:54:48 UTC (2,559 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.CV < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs cs.LG References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

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