Zifan Zhang

Zifan Zhang

Ph.D. student @ NC State

Zifan’s Homepage

Short Bibliography

I’m currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, working with Professor Yuchen Liu. I obtained my BS and MS degree both from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University, supervised by Professor Jia (Kevin) Liu. My research focuses on network digital twins for High-Performance Computing (HPC) and wireless systems, with a particular emphasis on system mapping, physical-digital synchronization, and security. I am broadly interested in building trustworthy and intelligent network architectures using advanced techniques, including federated learning, reinforcement learning, and robust optimization.

Research Interests

My research is situated at the intersection of High-Performance Computing (HPC), network systems, and machine learning, aiming to develop reliable and secure digital twin frameworks for next-generation infrastructures. In the sphere of networking and systems, I delve into exascale digital twins, topology-aware network representation, and the synchronization between physical entities and their digital counterparts. A significant portion of my work is dedicated to Security and Robustness, where I investigate defense strategies against adversarial behaviors, such as poisoning attacks in federated learning and distributed network systems. My focus also extends to mobile computing and autonomous systems, leveraging twin-aware reinforcement learning to secure vehicle networks and robotic communication paradigms.

  • Exascale & Wireless Digital Twins: Mapping, Synchronization, and Performance Modeling
  • Security and Robustness: Defending Distributed Network Systems against Adversarial Attacks
  • Predictive Network Analysis: Data-Driven Optimization for HPC and Wireless Infrastructures

News

[03/26] A paper on enhancing autonomous driving safety through Vision-Language Models has been accepted by IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium Workshops.

[10/25] A paper on next generation wireless network digital twins has been accepted by IEEE Network Magazine.

[09/56] Thrilled to be a contributor to the ExaDigiT project, which has been honored with a prestigious 2025 R&D 100 Award!

[09/25] Glad to give a talk at Digital Twins Workshop for High-Performance Computing@SC25. See you in St. Louis!

[09/25] A paper on transferring, merging, and splitting task-oriented network digital twins has been accepted by MobiWac.

[08/25] Glad to serve on the Search Advisory Committee for the next Department Head of Computer Science in the College of Engineering.

[03/25] A paper on digital twin and machine learning synergy has been accepted by IEEE Wireless Communication.

[01/25] A paper on federated unlearning attacks and defenses has been accepted by ACM The Web Conference.

[01/25] Invited to give a talk about digital network twins at ORNL’s Advanced Technologies Section (ATS) Seminar Series.

[09/24] A paper on decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning has been accepted by IEEE/IFIP International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt) as an invited paper.

[07/24] Media coverage on “How a ‘Digital Twin’ Can Make Wireless Networks Faster, More Reliable”.

[07/24] A paper on network digital twin poisoning attacks and defenses has been accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J).

[06/24] Our paper, titled “Poisoning Attacks on Federated Learning-based Wireless Traffic Prediction”, received Best Paper Award Runner-up at IEEE/IFIP Networking!

[05/24] A paper on digital twin-assisted caching optimization has been accepted by IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) (impact factor: 16.4).

[04/24] Two papers on network digital twin and federated learning poisoning attacks have been accepted by IFIP/IEEE Networking 2024 (acceptance rate: 24.6%).

[04/24] A paper on Byzantine-resilient decentralized federated learning has been accepted by ACM CCS 2024 (acceptance rate: 19%).

[03/24] Received Graduate Merit Award (GMA) provided by the College of Engineering.

[12/23] A paper on multi-agent reinforcement learning policy evaluation with local TD-learning updates has been accepted by ACM AAMAS 2024 (acceptance rate: 25%).

[08/23] Joined the NICE Lab at NC State as a Ph.D. student.