Zhizhen Zhong

Postdoc Researcher

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Email: zhizhenz [at] mit (dot) edu

Research interests: Reconfigurable Computer Networks | Reconfigurable Photonic Computing

Short Bio

I am a postdoctoral researcher at MIT CSAIL with Prof. Manya Ghobadi. I study in the intersection of networked systems and photonics/optoelectronics to build the next-generation reconfigurable computer networks and high-performance networked computing infrastructures.

Before joining MIT, I was a visiting researcher at Facebook with Dr. Ying Zhang. I received my Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in July 2019. My Ph.D. thesis is on "Traffic-Driven Self-Adaptive Optical Networking" that designs reconfigurable optical networks to optimize network application performance. I was a visiting Ph.D student at the University of California Davis, advised by Prof. Biswanath Mukherjee and Prof. Massimo Tornatore. I received my Bachelor's Degree of Engineering and secondary Bachelor's Degree of Economics from Tsinghua University in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

My awards include the Best Paper Award from OECC conference in 2022, Zijing-Scholar Fellowship from Tsinghua University in 2019, the 1st Place Best Poster Award (1 out of 600+ posters) on IEEE CLEO-PR/OECC/PGC conference from IEEE Photonics Society in 2017, the Tang Lixin Scholarship from Tsinghua University in 2016.

Publications ( ⚑ Preprints | ★ Selected | 📋 Full List )

Press Coverage

[Science 2022] Delocalized Photonic Deep Learning on the Internet's Edge

MIT News | Optics & Photonics News | TechXplore

[ACM SIGCOMM 2021] ARROW: Restoration-Aware Traffic Engineering

[NSDI 2021] Risk-Driven IP-Optical Network Management

Facebook Engineering Blog

[CLEO-PR/OECC 2017] Sub-Wavelength Optical-Circuit-Switched Networks

IEEE Photonics Society News

Selected Talks

ARROW: Restoration-Aware Traffic Engineering

February 2022, Google Networking Research Summit, online | Website
August 2021, ACM SIGCOMM 2021, online | Website | Video

BOW: First Real-World Demonstration of a Bayesian Optimization System for Wavelength Reconfiguration

June 2021, OFC 2021, online | Website | Video

ARROW and BOW: Bayesian Optimization for Reconfigurable Wide-Area Networks

June 2021, MIT and University of Washington Workshop on AI Implementations and Applications, online | Website | Video

Leveraging Optical Noise for Fast Fiber Cut Recovery

August 2020, ACM SIGCOMM 2020 Workshop on Optical Systems Design (OptSys 2020), online | Website

The Impact of Social Distancing on Facebook's Optical Backbone

August 2020, ACM SIGCOMM 2020 Workshop on Optical Systems Design (OptSys 2020), online | Website

Traffic-Driven Self-Ddaptive Optical Networking

October 2019, Special Seminar, China Telecom Beijing Research Institute, Beijing, China
May 2019, Ph.D. Defense, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Req2Route: learning to route for inter-domain lightpath provisioning

March 2019, Post-OFC Workshop, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA | Website | Slides
October 2018, AUA Postgraduate Forum, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China | Slides

Exploiting physical-layer flexibility for demand-responsive networks

     March 2019, Special Seminar, Nokia Bell Labs (Crawford Hill), Holmdel, NJ, USA | Slides
     April 2018, Special Seminar, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA | Slides
     March 2018, Post-OFC Workshop, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA | Website | Slides

Professional Services

Conference

     Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2023
     Program Committee, USENIX NSDI 2023
     Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2022
     External Reviewer, ACM IMC 2022
     Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Workshop on Optical Systems (OptSys 2021)
     Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021
     Program Committee, WCSP 2019

Journals

     Reviewer, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
     Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine
     Reviewer, Optics Express
     Reviewer, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology
     Reviewer, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking
     Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
     Reviewer, IEEE Access
     Reviewer, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (SIGCOMM CCR)
     Reviewer, Photonic Network Communications
     Reviewer, Optical Switching and Networking

Miscellaneous

Photography

In my spare time, I enjoy traveling and capturing the frozen time. See some of my photographical publications (peer reviewed) here: 1x

Last updated: September, 2022.

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