Lixia Zhang () is the Jonathan B. Postel Professor of Computer Science at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

.. Her expertise is in

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

s; she helped found the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

, designed the Resource Reservation Protocol, coined the term " middlebox", and pioneered the development of

named data networking Named Data Networking (NDN) (related to content-centric networking (CCN), content-based networking, data-oriented networking or information-centric networking (ICN)) is a proposed Future Internet architecture that seeks to address problems in conte ...

Biography

Zhang grew up in northern China, where she worked as a tractor driver on a farm when the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

closed the schools.. She earned a master's degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1981 at

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is part of the California State University system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degree programs, 122 m ...

, and completed her doctorate at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1989, under the supervision of David D. Clark. After working as a researcher at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

, she moved to UCLA in 1996. She and her husband, Jim Ma, have two sons. They reside in Sherman Oaks.

Contributions

Zhang was one of the 21 participants in the initial meeting of the

, in 1986, the only woman and the only student at the meeting. In the IETF, her initial work concerned

routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a Network theory, network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched ...

, although her thesis research was instead on

quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

.. She was also a member of the

Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards ...

, from 1994 to 1996 and again from 2005 to 2009. A protocol she designed for changing the settings in an experimental network setup became the basis for the Resource Reservation Protocol. Zhang's paper on the protocol, "RSVP: A New Resource ReSerVation Protocol" (with

Steve Deering Stephen Deering is a former Fellow at Cisco Systems, where he worked on the development and standardization of architectural enhancements to the Internet Protocol. Prior to joining Cisco in 1996, he spent six years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research C ...

, Deborah Estrin,

Scott Shenker Scott J. Shenker (born January 24, 1956) is an American computer scientist, and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the leader of the Extensible Internet Group at the International Computer Science ...

, and Daniel Zappala, ''IEEE Network'' 1993) was selected in 2002 as one of ten landmark articles reprinted with commentary in the 50th-anniversary issue of ''IEEE Communications Magazine''. In 1999 Zhang coined the term " middlebox" to refer to a computer networking device that performs functions other than that of a regular

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP ...

router. Examples of middleboxes include firewalls and network address translators. Her term has been widely adopted by the industry. Beginning in 2010 she has been the leader of a multi-campus research project concerning

.Named Data Networking: First Phase Participants
Retrieved 2015-06-14.

Awards and honors

In 2006, Zhang became a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of both the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

and the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

for contributions to the architecture and signaling protocols in packet switched networks. In 2009, she won the

IEEE Internet Award IEEE Internet Award is a Technical Field Award established by the IEEE in June 1999. The award is sponsored by Nokia Corporation. It may be presented annually to an individual or up to three recipients, for exceptional contributions to the ad ...

. In 2012, she was named to the Postel Professorship. In 2014, Zhang is featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards. Her picture appeared on the four of diamonds in a pack of

playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a f ...

s featuring 54 notable women in technology. In 2020, she won the 2020 SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award, while in 2021 she was inducted to the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. Overview ...

. In 2025, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zhang, Lixia 1951 births Living people Chinese computer scientists American computer scientists American women computer scientists Chinese women computer scientists Heilongjiang University alumni California State University, Los Angeles alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty Women Internet pioneers 2006 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the IEEE Chinese women scientists Chinese emigrants to the United States Scientists at PARC (company) Internet pioneers 21st-century American women