Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Honggang Zhang has been awarded a five-year $410,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers some of the NSF’s most prestigious awards to support the early career-development activities of junior faculty. These highly competitive awards are given to investigators who integrate research and teaching activities; the awards are intended to help build a foundation for a lifetime of integrated teacher-scholar productivity that meshes with the overall mission of the University.

Zhang will conduct research investigating what are termed unstructured dynamic overlay networks (unstructured networks), a type of computer network formed from interactions among constantly changing strategic users. In this type of network users rely on each other for transferring and finding data, and they form unstructured networks based on their own cost-benefit tradeoffs. Applications include file sharing, user-assisted media streaming, video-on-demand, and voice-over-IP (e.g., Skype). The project will endeavor to develop effective mechanisms to ensure the stability and efficiency of unstructured networks and to provide seamless inter-operation with the Internet architecture and service providers.

Grant funds will in part provide financial support to graduate students in the Computer Science program who will be assisting with the research.