Yihan Zou 

Research Interests

My current project work focuses on traffic engineering and bandwidth resource management in wide-area networks. My broader research interests include the modeling, analysis, control, and optimization in large-scale complex cyber-physical systems, e.g.,  Internet-of-Things and smart grid. My research goal is to bridge the theory and practices to provide provable performance guarantees on modern complex network systems. I am honored to receive the best paper award for ACM MobiHoc 2021. 

News

• [12/2025] Our journal paper "Minimizing Age-of-Information in Heterogeneous Multi-Channel Systems: A New Partial-Index Approach" was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Networking. [Link]

• [07/2025] Our paper "Net-P4ct: Enhanced WAN Bandwidth Fair Sharing Using P4 Programmable Switches" was accepted to NSDI 2026. Congratulations to the team! Looking forward to see everyone in Renton, WA. [Link]

• [08/2024] We presented our paper, "ResLake: Towards Minimum Job Latency and Balanced Resource Utilization in Geo-Distributed Job Scheduling," at 50th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB 2024). Good work team! [Link]

• [08/24/2021] Thanks for the newsletter from Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University. [Newsletter]

• [07/26/2021] Our paper "Minimizing Age-of-Information in Heterogeneous Multi-Channel Systems: A New Partial-Index Approach" won the Best Paper Award at ACM MobiHoc 2021. Congratulations to the entire research team! 

• [05/17/2021] I attended the Commencement for Class of 2021 and received my diploma.

• [05/02/2021] Our paper entitled "Minimizing Age-of-Information in Heterogeneous Multi-Channel Systems: A New Partial-Index Approach" has been accepted to MobiHoc'21!

• [01/20/2021] I successfully defended my dissertation! Cheers!

• [12/19/2020]  Our work on age-of-information was submitted to MobiHoc'21. Thanks to all the collaborators. Fingers crossed!

• [06/17/2020]  I was volunteering as Zoom Master for ACM e-Energy 2020 virtual conference.

• [06/08/2020]  I was selected for INFOCOM 2020 Student Conference Award by IEEE ComSoc.

• [04/29/2020]  Our paper "Virtual Generator-Storage Pairing for Robust Multi-Stage Power Grid Operations" was submitted and under review.  

• [02/15/2020]  Our paper "Leveraging Generators with Complementary Capabilities for Robust Multi-stage Power Grid Operations" was accepted to publication in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. Cheers!

• [02/02/2020]  Our paper "Low-overhead multi-antenna-enabled random access for machine-type communications with low mobility" was presented by Dr. Kwang Taik Kim in Information Theory and Application Workshop (ITA) 2020.

• [12/09/2019]  I presented my work  "Low-overhead multi-antenna-enabled random access for machine-type communications with low mobility" in IEEE GLOBECOM 2019, Waikoloa, HI.

• [12/05/2019]  Our paper "Low-Overhead Joint Beam-Selection and Random-Access Schemes for Massive Internet-of-Things with Non-Uniform Channel and Load", has been accepted for inclusion in the IEEE INFOCOM 2020. Cheers!

• [10/10/2019]  I was selected to receive NSF Student Travel Grant to attend IEEE Globecom 2019.

• [07/19/2019]  I successfully passed the Preliminary Exam and became a Ph.D. Candidate!

• [07/18/2019] Our paper "Low-overhead Multi-antenna-enabled Random Access for Machine-type Communications with Low Mobility" has been accepted at the IEEE GLOBECOM 2019.