Zhenhua Liu Assistant Professor Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department of Computer Science Email: zhenhua.liu[AT]stonybrook.edu. Office: Math Tower 1-118 Lab: 2214 Old Computer Science (SET lab)

[About Me] [Recent highlights] [Awards] [Publications] [Teaching] [Projects] About Me I am currently an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. I am also affiliated with Department of Computer Science department. I received my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the California Institute of Technology, where I worked with Prof. Adam Wierman and Prof. Steven Low. My research aims to develop analytical models, theoretical results, and deployable algorithms to manage complex distributed systems with limited information and network constraints. Three thrusts form the theoretical foundations, namely, online optimization, distributed control, and mechanism design. Moving from theory to practice, I have worked actively with industrial partners to implement some of my results to make real impacts. Please see my research interests and publications below for more information. Feel free to email me if you want to learn more about my research and are interested in joining my group. Recent highlights - November 2020: Awarded IBM 2020 Global University Program Academic Award. Thanks IBM! - November 2020: One paper accepted to IEEE Transaction on Computer. Congratulations to Xiaojun! - October 2020: Our proposal to DEED was selected for award. Thanks American Public Power Association! - July 2020: our paper won Best Paper Award at INFOCOM 2020!! Congratulations to Xiaojun! - June 2020: My PhD student Joshua Comden won the Woo Jong Kim Dissertation Award. Congratulations to Joshua! - My high school student Maximilian Du was named National semifinalist (scholar) of the Regeneron Science Talent Search - My PhD student Jessica Maghakian won the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations, Jessica! Thanks NSF! Honors and Awards (Selected) - IBM 2020 Global University Program Academic Award, 2020 - Best Paper Award, INFOCOM, 2020 - Woo Jong Kim Dissertation Award for my PhD student Joshua Comden (only one in the department), AMS department, Stony Brook University, 2020 - Excellence in Research Awards to my PhD student Joshua Comden, AMS department, Stony Brook University, 2020 - National semifinalist (scholar) of the Regeneron Science Talent Search to my HS student Maximilian Du, 2020 - Excellence in Teaching award, Stony Brook University, 2019 - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to my PhD student Jessica Maghakian, NSF, 2019 - Excellence in Teaching award, Stony Brook University, 2018 - Outstanding Teacher award, Stony Brook University, 2017 - Excellence in Teaching award, Stony Brook University, 2016 - Nominated for Best Student Paper Award, ACM GreenMetrics, 2016 - Research Initiation Initiative Grant Award, NSF, 2015 - SPEC Distinguished Dissertation Award (honorable mention), 2014 - ITRI-Rosenfeld Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Computerworld Honors Laureates for Net-zero Energy Data Center, 2013 - IEEE Sustainable Computing Register "Pick of the Month", 2013 - Best paper award, International Green Computing Conference (IGCC), 2012 - Best student paper award, ACM GreenMetrics, 2011 Selected Publications - Reducing the Service Function Chain Backup Cost over the Edge and Cloud by a Self-adapting Scheme Xiaojun Shang, Yaodong Huang, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang INFOCOM, 2020 (Best paper award). - AlloX: compute allocation in hybrid clusters Tan N. Le, Xiao Sun, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu Eurosys, 2020. - Geographically Coordinated Primary Frequency Control Joshua Comden, Tan N Le, Yue Zhao, Bong Jun Choi, Zhenhua Liu IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 2019 - Online Optimization in Cloud Resource Provisioning: Predictions, Regrets, and Algorithms Joshua Comden, Sijie Yao, Niangjun Chen, Haipeng Xing, Zhenhua Liu ACM Sigmetrics, 2019. - Using Predictions in Online Optimization: Looking forward with an eye on the past Niangjun Chen, Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Anshul Gandhi, Adam Wierman ACM Sigmetrics, 2016. - HUG: Multi-Resource Fairness for Correlated and Elastic Demands Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu, Ali Ghodsi, Ion Stoica NSDI, 2016. - Greening Geographical Load Balancing Zhenhua Liu, Minghong Lin, Adam Wierman, Steven Low and Lachlan L. H. Andrew. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2014. Extension of a paper that appeared in ACM Sigmetrics, 2011. IEEE Sustainable Computing Register Pick of the Month for the April 2013. 573 citations on Google scholar for conference and journal versions combined. - Renewable and Cooling Aware Workload Management for Sustainable Data Centers Zhenhua Liu, Yuan Chen, Cullen Bash, Adam Wierman, Daniel Gmach, Zhikui Wang, Manish Marwah and Chris Hyser. ACM Sigmetrics, Jun 11~15, 2012, London, UK. An extension of this work is used in the industrial first Net-zero Energy Data Center by HP, which was named a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate. Made the most downloaded list of all Sigmetrics papers in ACM Digital Library in 2013. - Online Algorithms for Geographical Load Balancing Minghong Lin, Zhenhua Liu, Adam Wierman and Lachlan L.H. Andrew. International Green Computing Conference (IGCC), 2012. Best paper award. - Data Center Demand Response: Avoiding the Coincident Peak via Workload Shifting and Local Generation. Zhenhua Liu, Adam Wierman, Yuan Chen, Benjamin Razon and Niangjun Chen. Performance Evaluation, vol. 70(10), Oct. 2013. Made the most downloaded list of all Performance Evaluation articles in 2013. - Pricing Data Center Demand Response. Zhenhua Liu, Iris Liu, Steven Low and Adam Wierman. ACM Sigmetrics, Jun 16~20, 2014, Austin, TX. Back to top Proceedings of Refereed Conference - Reducing the Service Function Chain Backup Cost over the Edge and Cloud by a Self-adapting Scheme Xiaojun Shang, Yaodong Huang, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang INFOCOM, 2020 (Best paper award). - Greening Reliability of Virtual Network Functions via Online Optimization Xiaojun Shang, Yu Liu, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang IEEE IWQoS, 2020. - Online Distributed Edge Caching for Mobile Data Offloading in 5G Networks Yiming Zeng, Yaodong Huang, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang IEEE IWQoS, 2020. - AlloX: compute allocation in hybrid clusters Tan N. Le, Xiao Sun, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu Eurosys, 2020. - Online Economic Dispatch with Volatile Renewable Generation and Ramping Costs Joshua Comden, Jessica Maghakian, Zhenhua Liu IEEE CNC, 2020. - Online Optimization in Cloud Resource Provisioning: Predictions, Regrets, and Algorithms Joshua Comden, Sijie Yao, Niangjun Chen, Haipeng Xing, Zhenhua Liu ACM Sigmetrics, 2019. - Sample Complexity of Power System State Estimation using Matrix Completion Joshua Comden, Marcello Colombino, Andrey Bernstein, Zhenhua Liu IEEE SmartGridComm, 2019. - Network Congestion-aware Online Service Function Chain Placement and Load Balancing Xiaojun Shang, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang IEEE ICPP, 2019. - Non-stationary Stochastic Network Optimization with Imperfect Estimations Yu Liu, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang IEEE ICDCS, 2019. - Joint Online Edge Caching and Load Balancing for Mobile Data Offloading in 5G Networks Yiming Zeng, Yaodong Huang, Zhenhua Liu, Yuanyuan Yang IEEE ICDCS, 2019. - Online optimization in the Non-Stationary Cloud: Change Point Detection for Resource Provisioning Jessica Maghakian, Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2019. Invited paper. - AlloX: Allocation across Computing Resources for Hybrid CPU/GPU clusters Tan N. Le, Xiao Sun, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu ACM Sigmetrics (poster), 2018. - BoPF: Mitigating the Burstiness-Fairness Tradeoff in Multi-Resource Clusters Tan N. Le, Xiao Sun, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu ACM Sigmetrics (poster), 2018. - Fair Allocation of Heterogeneous and Interchangeable Resources Xiao Sun, Tan N. Le, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu ACM MAMA (in conjunction with ACM Sigmetrics), 2018. - Optimal Energy Procurement for Geo-distributed Data Centers in Multi-timescale Electricity Markets Tan N. Le, Jie Liang, Zhenhua Liu, Ramesh K. Sitaraman, Jayakrishnan Nair and Bong Jun Choi IFIP Performance, 2017. Full paper. A short version appeared in ACM Greenmetrics, 2017. - Geographically Coordinated Frequency Control Joshua Comden, Tan N. Le, Yue Zhao, Bong Jun Choi and Zhenhua Liu IEEE CDC, 2017. - Incentivizing reliable demand response with customers’ uncertainties and capacity planning Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Yue Zhao ACM Sigmetrics, 2017. (Extended abstract) - Harnessing Flexible and Reliable Demand Response Under Customer Uncertainties Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Yue Zhao ACM E-energy, 2017. - Distributed Algorithm Design for Probabilistic Demand Response Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Yue Zhao ACM Greenmetrics, 2017. - Joint Capacity Planning and Operational Management for Sustainable Data Centers and Demand Response Tan Le, Zhenhua Liu, Yuan Chen, Cullen Bash ACM E-energy, 2016. - Optimizing the Level of Commitment in Demand Response Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Yue Zhao ACM Greenmetrics, 2016, Nominated for Best Student Paper Award. - Using Predictions in Online Optimization: Looking forward with an eye on the past Niangjun Chen, Joshua Comden, Zhenhua Liu, Anshul Gandhi, Adam Wierman ACM Sigmetrics, 2016. - HUG: Multi-Resource Fairness for Correlated and Elastic Demands Mosharaf Chowdhury, Zhenhua Liu, Ali Ghodsi, Ion Stoica NSDI, 2016. - Opportunities and Challenges for Data Center Demand Response. Adam Wierman, Zhenhua Liu, Iris Liu, and Hamed Mohsenian-Rad. International Green Computing Conference (IGCC), Nov 3~5, 2014, Dallas, TX. - Pricing Data Center Demand Response Zhenhua Liu, Iris Liu, Steven Low and Adam Wierman. ACM Sigmetrics, Jun 16~20, 2014, Austin, TX. - Data Center Demand Response: Avoiding the Coincident Peak via Workload Shifting and Local Generation Zhenhua Liu, Adam Wierman, Yuan Chen, Benjamin Razon and Niangjun Chen. IFIP Performance 2013. This work also appeared as an extended abstract at ACM Sigmetrics 2013. - Renewable and Cooling Aware Workload Management for Sustainable Data Centers Zhenhua Liu, Yuan Chen, Cullen Bash, Adam Wierman, Daniel Gmach, Zhikui Wang, Manish Marwah and Chris Hyser. ACM Sigmetrics, Jun 11~15, 2012, London, UK. An extension of this work is used in the industrial first Net-zero Energy Data Center by HP, which was named a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate. 408 citations on Google scholar since Jun 2012. - Online Algorithms for Geographical Load Balancing Minghong Lin, Zhenhua Liu, Adam Wierman and Lachlan L.H. Andrew. International Green Computing Conference (IGCC), 2012. Best paper award. 237 citations on Google scholar since Jun 2012. - Algorithms for Dynamic Capacity Provisioning Lachlan L. H. Andrew, Minghong Lin, Zhenhua Liu and Adam Wierman (alphabetical order). Conference on Optical Internet (COIN), 2012. - Towards the Design and Operation of Net-zero Energy Data Centers Martin Arlitt, Cullen Bash, Sergey Blagodurov, Yuan Chen, Tom Christian, Daniel Gmach, Chris Hyser, Niru Kumari, Zhenhua Liu, Manish Marwah, Alan McReynolds, Chandrakant Patel, Amip Shah, Zhikui Wang and Rongliang Zhou (alphabetical order). 13th IEEE Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITherm), 2012. - Geographical Load Balancing with Renewables Zhenhua Liu, Minghong Lin, Adam Wierman, Steven Low and Lachlan L. H. Andrew. ACM GreenMetrics, Jun 7, 2011, San Jose, CA. Best student paper award. 208 citations on Google scholar since Jun 2011. - Greening Geographical Load Balancing Zhenhua Liu, Minghong Lin, Adam Wierman, Steven Low and Lachlan L. H. Andrew. ACM Sigmetrics, Jun 7~11, 2011, San Jose, CA. IEEE Sustainable Computing Register Pick of the Month for the April 2013. 485 citations on Google scholar since Jun 2011. Journal Publications and Preprints - Geographically Coordinated Primary Frequency Control Joshua Comden, Tan N Le, Yue Zhao, Bong Jun Choi, Zhenhua Liu IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 2019 - Greening Geographical Load Balancing Zhenhua Liu, Minghong Lin, Adam Wierman, Steven Low, Lachlan L. H. Andrew. IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking (ToN), 2015. Extension of a paper that appeared in ACM Sigmetrics, 2011. - Data Center Demand Response: Avoiding the Coincident Peak via Workload Shifting and Local Generation Zhenhua Liu, Adam Wierman, Yuan Chen, Benjamin Razon, and Niangjun Chen. Performance Evaluation, vol. 70(10), Oct. 2013. Conference version appeared in the Proceedings of IFIP Performance 2013. Made the most downloaded list of all Performance Evaluation articles. - Geographical Load Balancing with Renewables Zhenhua Liu, Minghong Lin, Adam Wierman, Steven Low, Lachlan L. H. Andrew. Performance Evaluation Review, vol. 39(3), Dec. 2011. Conference version appeared in the Proceedings of ACM GreenMetrics 2011. Back to top Industrial Interactions - HP Labs, Sustainable Ecosystems Research Group, June 2011~April 2013 - Project: Sustainable Data Center - Impacts: I helped HP design and implement the industrial first Net-Zero Energy Data Center, which has been widely reported in media and news, e.g. the Wall Street Journal, Com- puterworld, Wired, ZDNet, The Register, and was named a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate. Additionally, the results of my research provided insight and guidance into the design and management of HP EcoPOD data center, which has been used by many major IT companies, e.g., Facebook, eBay, Apple, and research institute, e.g., National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and won the 2013 InfoWorld Green IT Award. - Three patents filed. - HP Labs, Systems Research Lab, May 2013~September 2013 - Project: Big Data Workloads with Emerging Hardware Systems - One patent filed. - Google, Infrastructure~storage, April 2012~June 2012 - Project: Load Balancing in Next-generation Storage Systems - Collaboration with HP and Fort Collins Utilities, Colorado on data center demand response - Collaboration with Cloudera Inc. on big data workload and performance - Collaboration with Akamai Inc. on geographical load balancing Back to top Teaching - AMS 691: Topics in Applied Math (Foundations of Data Science), Stony Brook University, Spring 2020. - AMS 559: Smart Energy in the Information Age, Stony Brook University, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2020. - AMS 301: Finite Mathematical Structures, Stony Brook University, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018. - AMS 560: Big Data Systems, Algorithms and Networks, Stony Brook University, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019. - AMS 546: Network Flows, Stony Brook University, Spring 2017. - AMS/CS 691-01: Algorithms and Big Data Systems, Stony Brook University, Spring 2016. - AMS/CS 691-02: Green IT and Smart Grid, Stony Brook University, Spring 2016. - TA for CS/EE147 Network performance analysis, Caltech, Spring 2013. - TA for CS/EE146 The Advanced Networking: Green IT, Caltech, Spring 2011. - TA for CS/EE145 Projects in Networking, Caltech, Spring 2011. - TA for CS/EE143 Communication Networks, Caltech, Fall 2010. Back to top Current project - Grid-Ready Energy Analytics Training with Data, DOE DE-EE0008574. - MRI: Acquisition of Heterogeneous Computer System for Machine Learning, NSF 1919752. - Demystifying the role of prediction models: bridging prediction algorithms and resource provisioning, NSF CNS-1717588. - Enhancing the Parasol Experimental Testbed for Sustainable Computing, NSF CNS-1730128. - Enabling Application-Level Performance Predictability in Public Clouds, NSF CNS-1617698. Latest update 8/2/2020