Dr. Xiaodong Zhang, Computer Science and Engineering Chair and holder of the Robert M. Critchfield Professorship in Engineering, has been named as an 2011 Distinguished Engineering Alumni from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Zhang, who attained his Ph.D. from Colorado in 1989, achieved the Distinguished status for his work the categories of Research and Invention and Education.
Xiaodong Zhang comments on this award with gratitude, "University of Colorado at Boulder was my starting point of an American dream, where I had many beautiful memories besides receiving an excellent graduate education. In my first two years' study at Boulder, I commuted from an off-campus apartment 4 miles away to school every day by bicycle. I had an enjoyable experience during spring, summer and autumn times in the foot of the Rocky Mountains, but there were some challenges during the snow storms in winters. I still vividly remember several unknown and goodwill Boulder citizens stopped their cars on the road and gave me and my bicycle rides back home, which has always inspired me to help others in their critical times."
Despite his busy administrative duties as the department chair, various professional service activities, he has maintained a highly active research program. A multi-facet researcher, Dr. Zhang's work crosses over two of CSE's core areas, Systems and Networking. He is best known for his work in memory systems, which is both fundamental to system design and applicable to production implementation, directly impacting and contributing to the advancement of computer systems. He has co-authored several influential algorithms and their system implementations that have been widely adopted in main stream operating and database systems, and commercial processors. His recent work on designs and implementations of scalable distributed systems for big data analytics have been adopted by production systems in Facebook and Yahoo!.
Dr. Zhang received the Overseas Contribution Award from the China Computer Federation in the 2010 China National Computer Congress. This annual award is given to a computer scientist outside China, who has made a significant impact on the computing field and outstanding contributions to computing research and education in China. Zhang has been a visiting chaired professor in Tsinghua University, and served on the advisory board at the Institute of Computing Technology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Before joining Ohio State in 2006, Xiaodong was the Chair of Computer Science at the College of William and Mary. From 2001 to 2004, he was on leave to serve as program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he started several research initiatives, including effectively developing and utilizing Internet and distributed system technology to significantly raise the level of high-performance computing at a much lower cost. He also served on two important national committees tasked with setting funding policies and focusing research directions to revitalize our high-end computing efforts while he was at NSF.
He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Beijing University of Technology, China.