Heather Zheng's Website

Computer Science University of california, Santa barbara

Heather Zheng

I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science. I received my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Maryland, College Park in 1999. I joined UCSB after spending 6 years in industry labs (Bell-Labs, NJ and Microsoft Research Asia). At UCSB, I lead the LINK Lab, part of the Next Generation Networking Group.

I was selected as one of the MIT Technology Review's TR 35 (2005) for my work on Cognitive Radios; my work was featured by MIT Technology Review as one of the 10 Emerging Technologies (2006); and I am a fellow of the World Technology Network. More details can be found in my Curriculum Vitae.

I am looking for talented and self-motivated graduate students on wireless networking or social networks. Prospective students should first read the Admission FAQ page, and then email me your resume with a subject line of "UCSB Applicant."

My Research

My general research areas include wireless networking and systems, mobile and social computing. My current research is on wireless data centers, cognitive radios and dynamic spectrum access, and social networking. Check out LINK Lab's webpage for most recent project/publication information.

News: One of our current projects is to build high-speed wireless connections for data centers. Our first paper (3D Beamforming for Wireless Data Centers) appeared in HotNets 2011. We have built an experimental testbed to verify our 3D beamforming design concept and to explore its benefits for data centers. Our results will appear in a paper in SIGCOMM 2012.
Press Coverage: MIT Technology Review (12/11), ExtremeTech (12/11), New York Times (01/12), MIT Techology Review (04/12), ComputerWorld (05/12).

Recent Publications:
- Wireless Data Centers
        - 3D Beamforming for Wireless Data Centers, HotNets'11.
        - Mirror Mirror on the Ceiling: Flexible Wireless Links for Data Centers, SIGCOMM'12, to appear
- Smartphone based Mobile Systems
        - I am the Antenna: Accurate Outdoor AP Location using Smartphones, MobiCom'11 [PDF].
- Social Networks
        - Measurement-calibrated Graph Models for Social Network Experiments, WWW 2010 [PDF]
        - Orion: Shortest Path Estimation for Large Social Graphs, WOSN 2010 [PDF]
- Dynamic Spectrum Access
       - Enforcing Dynamic Spectrum Access with Spectrum Permits, MobiHoc 2012, to appear.
       - On the Feasibility of Effective Opportunistic Spectrum Access, IMC 2010, [PDF]
       - Papyrus: A Software Platform for Distributed Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Using SDRs, CCR, Jan. 2011 [PDF]
       - The Spaces Between Us: Setting and Maintaining Boundaries in Wireless Spectrum Access, MobiCom'10 [PDF]
        - Supporting Demanding Wireless Applications with Frequency-agile Radios, NSDI 2010 [PDF]
        - DEMO - Jello: Dynamic Spectrum Sharing in Digital Homes, Infocom 2010 [PDF][Photo]
        - The Impact of Frequency-Agility on Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, DySPAN 2010 [PDF]
- Dynamic Spectrum Auctions [List of Papers at Mobicom/hoc, Infocom]

Past Research: My research spreads across multiple layers. At Microsoft Research Asia, I initiated and led the Nautilus project on Open Spectrum Systems; At Wireless Research Lab, Bell-Labs, I worked on Radio Resource Allocation for Broadband Wireless Networks including MIMO/BLAST, Network Scheduling and TCP, and Base Station Router. My Ph.D. thesis research at Univ. of Maryland, College Park was on multimedia communications, a cross layer design framework to provide resource-efficient multimedia delivery over noisy networks. Here are the links to some of my collection of past projects.

Teaching

Spring 2011:CS64 - Computer Organization
Fall 2010: CS290F - Smartphone-centric Wireless Systems
Spring 2010: CS182/ECE160 - Multimedia Computing: a undergradate course on multimedia computing and networking.

Professional Activities

TPC co-Chair: DySPAN 2011
Workshop co-Chair: SDR'09
Recent TPC Activities: Sigcomm'11, Infocom'11, MobiCom'10, MobiHoc'10, WoWMoM'10, DySPAN'10, Infocom'10, SECON'10, MobiCom'09, Infocom'09, SECON'09
Journals: Trans. on Mobile Computing (Assoc. Editor, 2008-present), Trans. on Wireless Communication (Editor, 2008-09), Physical Communication (Editorial Board & Guest Editor)