Shizhen Zhao

Tenure-track associate professor
School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
E-mail: shizhenzhao at sjtu.edu.cn

About Me

I am currently a tenure-track associate professor in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. From September 2015 to January 2019, I was a Software and Research Engineering in Google's network infrastructure team. Before that, I received my PhD degree from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Purdue University in August 2015, advised by Prof. Xiaojun Lin.

I am currently looking for highly motivated students who are interested in theoretical modeling, algorithm and system design, system implementation, etc. Students at all levels, including undergraduate students and graduate students, are welcomed!

Research Interests

Closing the gap between theory and system. I am a theorist working on large-scale networked systems, including software defined networks, internet of things, smart grids, wireless networks. My current focus is software defined networking in data centers. I am particularly interested in developing and applying theories, including but not limited to, queueing theory, convex optimization, robust optimization, machine learning, etc., to real systems, and demonstrating how theory changes the fundamental architecture of large-scale networked systems.

News

  • [Oct 2024]: One paper is accepted by ToN.
  • [July 2024]: One paper is accepted by NSDI 2025.
  • [May 2024]: Two papers are accepted by SIGCOMM 2024.
  • [March 2023]: Our paper is accepted by ToN.
  • [December 2022]: Our paper is accepted by NSDI 2023.
  • [December 2022]: Our paper is accepted by INFOCOM 2023.
  • [September 2022]: Our paper is accepted by ToN.
  • [October 2021]: Our paper is accepted by SIGMETRICS 2022.
  • [August 2021]: Our paper is accepted by ICNP 2021.

    • Publications

    Conference

  • Wenli Xiao, Yuqing Yang, Peirui Cao, Zhuoran Liu, Shizhen Zhao, Xinbing Wang, "OFC: An Original congestion-based Fine-grained Priority Flow Control," in SECON, Phoenix, AZ, USA, December, 2024. (Corresponding Author)
  • Shengkai Lin, Shizhen Zhao, Peirui Cao, Xinchi Han, Quan Tian, Wenfeng Liu, Qi Wu, Donghai Han, Xinbing Wang, "ONCache: A Cache-Based Low-Overhead Container Overlay Network," in NSDI, Philadelphia, PA, USA, April, 2025. (Corresponding Author)
  • Peirui Cao, Wenxue Cheng, Shizhen Zhao, Yongqiang Xiong, "Network Load Balancing with Parallel Flowlets for AI Training Clusters," in SIGCOMM Workshop on Networks for AI Computing, Sydney, Australia, August, 2024.
  • Ximeng Liu, Shizhen Zhao, Yong Cui, Xinbing Wang, "FIGRET: Fine-Grained Robustness-Enhanced Traffic Engineering," in SIGCOMM, Sydney, Australia, August, 2024. (Corresponding Author)
  • Cong Liang, Xiangli Song, Jing Cheng, Mowei Wang, Yashe Liu, Zhenhua Liu, Shizhen Zhao, Yong Cui, "NegotiaToR: Towards A Simple Yet Effective On-demand Reconfigurable Datacenter Network," in SIGCOMM, Sydney, Australia, August, 2024.
  • Shengkai Lin, Qinwei Yang, Zengyin Yang, Yuchuan Wang, Shizhen Zhao, "LubeRDMA: A Fail-safe Mechanism of RDMA," in APNet, Sydney, Australia, August, 2024. (Corresponding Author)
  • Xiao Zhang, Peirui Cao, Yongxi Lyu, Qizhou Zhang, Shizhen Zhao, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "FC+: Near-optimal Deadlock-free Expander Data Center Networks," in ISPA, Wuhan, China, December, 2023. (Corresponding Author)
  • Tianyi Huang, Shizhen Zhao, "Accelerating QUIC with AF_XDP," in ICA3PP 2023, Tianjin, China, October, 2023.
  • Shuyuan Zhang, Shu Shan, Shizhen Zhao, "Reducing Reconfiguration Time in Hybrid Optical-Electrical Datacenter Networks," in APNet, Hong Kong, China, June, 2023. (Corresponding Author)
  • Guangnan Feng, Dezun Dong, Shizhen Zhao, Yutong Lu, "GRAP: Group-level Resource Allocation Policy for Reconfigurable Dragonfly Network in HPC," in ICS, Orlando, FL, USA, June, 2023.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Qizhou Zhang, Peirui Cao, Xiao Zhang, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "Flattened Clos: Designing High-performance Deadlock-free Expander Data Center Networks Using Graph Contraction," in NSDI, Boston, MA, USA, April, 2023.
  • Yunzhuo Liu, Bo Jiang, Shizhen Zhao, Tao Lin, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "LIBRA: Contention-Aware GPU Thread Allocation for Data Parallel Training in High Speed Networks," in INFOCOM, New York, USA, May, 2023.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Peirui Cao, Xinbing Wang, "Understanding the Performance Guarantee of Physical Topology Design for Optical Circuit Switched Data Centers," in SIGMETRICS, Mumbai, India, June, 2022.
  • Peirui Cao, Shizhen Zhao, Min Yee Teh, Yunzhuo Liu, Xinbing Wang, "TROD: Evolving From Electrical Data Center to Optical Data Center," in ICNP, Virtual Event, November, 2021. (Corresponding Author)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiao Zhang, Peirui Cao, Xinbing Wang, "Design of Robust and Efficient Edge Server Placement and Server Scheduling Policies," in IWQoS, Virtual Event, June, 2021. (Technical Report)
  • Min Yee Teh, Shizhen Zhao, Peirui Cao, Keren Bergman, "COUDER: Robust Topology Engineering for Optical Circuit Switched Data Center Networks," available online: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.00090.pdf (Corresponding Author)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Rui Wang, Junlan Zhou, Joon Ong, Jeffery C. Mogul, Amin Vahdat, "Minimal Rewiring: Efficient Live Expansion for Clos Data Center Networks," in NSDI, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, February, 2019. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, Dionysios Aliprantis, Hugo N. Villegas, Minghua Chen, "Online Multi-stage Decisions for Robust Power-Grid Operations under High Renewable Uncertainty," in IEEE INFOCOM, San Francisco, California, USA, April, 2016. (Technical Report)
  • Lei Deng, Chih-Chun Wang, Minghua Chen, Shizhen Zhao, "Timely Wireless Flows with Arbitrary Traffic patterns: Capacity Region and Scheduling Algorithms," in IEEE INFOCOM, San Francisco, California, USA, April, 2016.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, Minghua Chen, "Peak-Minimizing Online EV Charging: Price of Uncertainty and Algorithm Robustification," in IEEE INFOCOM, Hong Kong, China, April, 2015. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, "Rate-Control and Multi-Channel Scheduling for Wireless Live Streaming with Stringent Deadlines," in IEEE INFOCOM, Toronto, Canada, April, 2014. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, Minghua Chen, "Peak-Minimizing Online EV Charging," in 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Monticello, Illinois, Oct. 2013. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, "On the Design of Scheduling Algorithms for End-to-End Backlog Minimization in Multi-hop Wireless Networks," in IEEE INFOCOM, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 2012. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Luoyi Fu, Xinbing Wang, Qian Zhang, "Fundamental Relationship between Node Density and Delay in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with Unreliable Links," in ACM MobiCom 2011, Las Vegas, Sept. 2011. (Technical Report)

    • Journal

  • Wenli Xiao, Shizhen Zhao, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "Segment EDF: A Scheduling Policy with Tight Deterministic Latency under Multi-hop Networks," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. (Corresponding Author)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Ximeng Liu, Tianyu Zhu, Xinbing Wang, "Pulse+: DetNet Routing Under Delay-diff Constraint," submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. (Technical Report)
  • Ximeng Liu, Shizhen Zhao, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "LPulse: An efficient algorithm for service function chain placement and routing with delay guarantee," in Computer Networks, Volume 253, November 2024.
  • Peirui Cao, Shizhen Zhao, Dai Zhang, Zhuotao Liu, Mingwei Xu, Min Yee Teh, Yunzhuo Liu, Xinbing Wang, Chenghu Zhou, "Threshold-based Routing-Topology Co-design for Optical Data Center," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Volume 31, Issue 6, December 2023.
  • Min Yee Teh, Shizhen Zhao, Peirui Cao, Keren Bergman, "Enabling Quasi-static Reconfigurable Networks with Robust Topology Engineering," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Volume 31, Issue 3, June 2023.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Yihan Zou, Xiaojun Lin, Dionysios Aliprantis, Hugo N. Villegas Pico, Minghua Chen, Anya Castillo, "Leveraging Generators With Complementary Capabilities for Robust Multistage Power Grid Operations," in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 2020.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, Minghua Chen, "Robust Online Algorithms for Peak-Minimizing EV Charging under Multi-Stage Uncertainty," in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2017. (Technical Report)
  • Lei Deng, Chih-Chun Wang, Minghua Chen, and Shizhen Zhao, "Timely Wireless Flows with General Traffic Patterns: Capacity Region and Scheduling Algorithms," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2017.
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xiaojun Lin, "Design of Scheduling Algorithms for End-to-End Backlog Minimization in Wireless Multi-hop Networks under K-hop Interference Models," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2016. (Technical Report)
  • Shizhen Zhao, Xinbing Wang, "Node Density and Delay in Large-Scale Wireless Networks with Unreliable Links," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2014.
  • Yaokun Wu, Shizhen Zhao, "Incidence Matrix and Cover Matrix of Nested Interval Orders," in Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra, 2012.

    • Group

  • Ph.D. Students: Peirui Cao, Xinchi Han, Wenli Xiao, Shengkai Lin, Weihao Jiang, Ximeng Liu
  • Master Students: Qinwei Yang, Yongxi Lv, Qizhou Zhang, Xiao Zhang, Tianyi Huang, Yuqing Yang
  • Undergraduate Students: Changkun Liu (Ph.D. at HKUST), Haichao Yang (Ph.D. at UCSD), Yongqi Wang (Alibaba Ant Group)