Zhi-Li Zhang

Professor, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Qwest Land Grant Chair in Telecommunications, Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Contact

zhzhang@cs.umn.edu

612-625-8568

6-187 Kenneth H. Keller Hall
200 Union Street Se
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Zhi-Li Zhang

Professor, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Qwest Land Grant Chair in Telecommunications, Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Biography

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (1997)
M.S. in Computer science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (1992)
B.S. in Computer Science, Nanjing University (1986)

Professional Background

Zhi-Li Zhang joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor in 1997. He is currently the Qwest Chair
Professor in Telecommunications. He was named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor
in 2013. Zhang received his M.S. degree (1993) and Ph.D. degree (1997) in computer science
from the University of Massachusetts. He served as the Associate Director for Research at the
Digital Technology Center, University of Minnesota from 2015 to 2021.

Visit Zhi-Li Zhang's Experts@Minnesota profile page.

Research

Zhang's research interests lie broadly in networking, edge and cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) support for networked systems and networked systems support for AI/ML. His past research was centered on the analysis, design and development of scalable Internet quality-of-service (QoS), content distribution networks, Internet measurement, resilient routing systems and network security among others. His current research thrusts focus primarily on i) building service-oriented, application-aware, highly scalable, resilient, and secure 5G/next-generation (NextG) networked systems; and ii) developing and incorporating novel AI/ML algorithms to enable intelligent software-defined networking infrastructures, edge/cloud systems and emerging applications such as collaborative autonomous driving, Digital Twins, metaverse and Internet-of-Things (IoT).

Research Division
Computing Systems

Current Research
Google Scholar
Zhang's Computer Science Bibliography (DBLP)
UMN Networking Research Group

Recent News

Zhi-Li Zhang Leads Shared Automated Vehicles Research
New UMN networking research presented at SOSR 2021
Three papers with Minnesota authors at SIGCOMM 2021
CS&E faculty ranked among top CS researchers in the world
Collaboration with Cisco explores frontier of data technologies
Professor Zhang receives AWS ML Research Award
University of Minnesota awarded federal grant to research autonomous vehicles

Teaching

Publications & Awards

Honors and Awards

2007 - present: Qwest Land Grant Chair in Telecommunications
2013: McKnight Professorships
2011: IEEE Fellow
2007: IBM Faculty Award
2006: IBM Faculty Award
2005: College of Science and Engineering - George W. Taylor Awards
2000: McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
1998: National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER Award)

Selected Grants
NSF CISE CCF Core Medium Award: MoDL: Analytical Foundations for Deep Learning and Inference over Graphs
Calder, Giannakis, Zhang; National Science Foundation; 7/1/22 - 6/30-25

CNS Core: Medium: NFLambda -- A Granular, Scalable and Secure NFV Framework for High Performance Packet Processing at 100 Gbps and Beyond
Zhang, Z., Lu, K. & Zhai, A. B.; National Science Foundation; 10/1/21 - 9/30/24

NSF Convergence Accelerator Track G: SONIC: Securely Operate through 5G Networks with Informed Control
Zhang, Z.; University of Utah; 8/1/22 - 7/31/23