Heather (Haitao) Zheng

Institute Role
Member of Computing Solutions Group

Role in Affiliated Centers
Member of the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing

Research
Heather Zheng’s general research interests include wireless networking and systems, mobile computing and multimedia computing. She is also interested in security, distributed systems and social networks. As part of her work with the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing, Zheng works to curb energy consumption in wireless networks through spectrum scavenging. Her current research focuses on designing robust and scalable systems to provide reliable and efficient spectrum usage to wireless networks. It combines multiple disciplines from algorithms and systems to economics and security.

Biography
Heather Zheng received Ph.D. (1999) and M.S.E. (1998) degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China (1995). Zheng is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara where she leads the LINK Lab, part of the Next Generation Networking Group. Before coming to UCSB in 2005, she spent 6 years in industry research positions at Bell-Labs, Murray Hill and Microsoft Research Asia. In 2006, her work on Cognitive Radios was featured in MIT Technology Review as a Top-10 Emerging Technology, and she recently became a fellow of the World Technology Network. In 2005, she was one of MIT Technology Review's Top 35 Innovators under the age of 35 for her work on cognitive radios. Zheng received Bell Laboratories President's Gold Award from Lucent Bell-Labs (2002), and the George Harhalakis Outstanding Graduate Student Award from Institute of System Research, University of Maryland, College Park (1998-1999). She was admitted to the highly gifted class of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China at age of 15, and graduated with the highest honors.