Xiaolan (Ellen) Zhang

Dr. Xiaolan (Ellen) Zhang is an assistant professor of Computer and Information Science at Fordham University.

She completed her undergraduate education at Peking University, P.R. China, where she received her BS degree is Computer Science. She earned her MS and PhD degree in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. Zhang has six year industrial experience, and has published papers in conferences and journals in the area of Computer Networks, more specifically, Disruption Tolerant Networks and multimedia streaming systems.

My general research interests are in the area of computer networks and distributed systems. In particular, I have studied some fundamental problems in the areas of Disruption Tolerant Networks and multimedia streaming systems.

In recent years, wireless networks have been increasingly deployed in challenging environments, such as wireless sensor networks, disaster relief team networks, and networks for rural area in developing countries. Even in areas with infrastructure support, peer-to-peer opportunistic contacts have been leveraged to provide alternative network connectivities, information dissemination and retrieval, and mobile social network communities to people on the go. These sparse ad hoc networks (Disruption Tolerant Network, DTN) present new challenges due to their dynamic topology and inherent resource constraints. I am interested in studying fundamental problems concerning such networks, including performance modeling of epidemic style routing, benefits of network coding, and mobility trace modeling etc.

In the area of multimedia streaming system, I have worked in the design, implementation and performance evaluation of a multimedia streaming proxy aimed to provide a research platform for various streaming services.

Xiaolan Zhang, Jim Kurose, Brian Levine, Don Towsley, and Honggang Zhang (2007). "Study of a Bus-Based Disruption Tolerant Network: Mobility Modeling and Impact on Routing", ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom), Montreal, Canada.

Xiaolan Zhang, Giovanni Neglia, Jim Kurose, Don Towsley (2007). "Performance Modeling of Epidemic Routing", Elsevier Computer Networks journal, 51/10

Giovanni Neglia, Xiaolan Zhang (2006). "Optimal Delay-Power Tradeoff in Sparse Delay Tolerant Networks: a preliminary study", SIGCOMM ACM Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANT), Pisa, Italy.

Xiaolan Zhang, Giovanni Neglia, Jim Kurose, Don Towsley (2006). "On the Benefits of Random Linear Coding for Unicast Applications in Disruption Tolerant Networks", IEEE Second Workshop on Network Coding, Theory, and Applications (NetCod), Boston.