I am a faculty member at the Computer Science department, U.C. Santa Barbara. Before UCSB, I completed my M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley. My research spans the areas of networking, security and privacy, distributed systems, simulation and modeling. I received my B.S. degree from Yale University (BR'97). I am a recent recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, MIT Tech Review's TR-35 Award (Young Innovators Under 35), and ComputerWorld's Top 40 Technology Innovators.

New and Hopefully Useful

Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Allen and Dr. Gayatri Swamynathan!

Due to time constraints, I am currently unable to host undergraduate visiting students seeking internships. Please do not email me requesting such internships, as I will not be able to respond to these unsolicited emails.

Chimera v1.20 structured overlay library for Linux and 32-bit WindowsXP

Student resources

Prospective graduate students
- Please read these Frequently Asked Questions before contacting me.
- Why you should come to UCSB, and Information for Admitted Students
- This is what a PhD is, and why you should want one.
For current UCSB (especially my) students
- How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper
- UCSB Only: Job listings, UCSB Fellowships, Preparing for the MAE
- My reading list for advisees.
- Archive of useful papers on networking, systems, security, etc.

Bits of accumulated wisdom (mostly for my reference):

Cargo Cult Science, Cal Tech speech by Richard Feynman on scientific integrity.
A talk on Technology and Courage, by Turing winner Ivan Sutherland.
How to be a good graduate student
Rugaber's notes on teaching, dissertations, and reading papers.
Useful advice for PhD students
Donald Knuth's All Questions Answered
Songwu Lu's page On Research

Teaching

[F08] CS276 - Graduate Networking: An advanced course in networking covering topics such as distance vector and link state routing, BGP, multicast, TCP variations, wireless and peer-to-peer networks. Prerequisite: solid background in networking (176A/B or undergraduate equivalent).
Future/Other Courses (MouseOver for Prerequisites)
[F08] [F07] [F06] CS276 - Graduate Networking
[S08] [S07] [S06] CS170 - Operating Systems
[W08] [W07] CS176B - Network Computing
[S07] CS595N - Anonymous and Privacy-Preserving Systems
[S06] [W05] CS290F - Large-scale Networked Systems
[S06] CS176C - Advanced Topics in Networking

Research

My research interests lie in the boundaries between networking, operating systems, and algorithms. I also have healthy interests in security, wireless and mobile computing, programming languages and databases.

At UCSB, I lead the CURRENT lab for research on Secure and Reliable Networking. Some of our ongoing projects include:

Security for overlay networks
Reputations for peer-to-peer systems
Anonymous communication
High throughput overlay routing

The Mutant cluster, online reservation system, usage and uptime statistics.

My thesis work on the Tapestry structured P2P overlay.

Dates: Travel and CFPs

Fall Quarter Classes: 9/25-12/5-12/13
Winter 09 Quarter Classes: 1/5-3/13-3/21
Spring 09 Quarter Classes: 3/30-6/5-6/12
Dates:: CFP August 22-29: INFOCOM 2009
CFP October 3-10: NSDI 2009
CFP November 7: EuroSys 2009
CFP January 13, 2009: HotOS 2009

Professional Activities

Program Committees

ICDCS 2009	INFOCOM 2009
ICPADS 2008	MoVeNet 2007
ICNP 2007	INFOCOM 2008
IWQoS 2007	PMECT 2007
ICDCS 2007	ACM MobiShare 2006
ACM STC 2006	IEEE PMAC-2WN 2006
ICNP 2006	ICDCS 2006
IPTPS 2006	P2MS 2005
ACM WiSe 2005	AEPP 2005
Networking 2005	IPTPS 2005
ICDCS 2005	MP2P 2004

Other Professional Service

Steering Committee: IPTPS

Program Co-Chair: IPTPS 2006

Web Systems Chair: ICNP 2006

Contact Info

Prof. Ben Y. Zhao
Department of Computer Science
University of California
Santa Barbara, California 93106-5110
Phone: +1 (805) 893-3926
Fax: +1 (805) 893-8553