Rui Zhang.

Rui Zhang

Associate Professor

Daniel L. Chester Mid-Career Professor
of Computer and Information Sciences

Department of Computer and Information Sciences
University of Delaware

ruizhang@udel.eduPublications
Rui Zhang

Bio

I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University in 2013, and my B.E. and M.E. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2001 and 2005. Before joining the University of Delaware in 2016, I was an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii. I previously worked as a software engineer at UTStarcom.

Research

I study security and privacy in networked and distributed systems and digital platforms.

My current research focuses on defending against coordinated manipulation in digital platforms, mobility systems, computer networks, federated learning, and social-choice systems.

  • Coordinated manipulation defense
  • Security & privacy
  • Networked & distributed systems

Honors & Awards

2023 IEEE CNS
Best Paper Award
2019 IEEE/ACM IWQoS
Best Paper Award Runner-up
2017 NSF CAREER Award

Recent updates

  • TrustSense, our work on resilient cooperative IoT sensing, is accepted to ACM MobiHoc 2026.

  • DataGuard, a dataset auditing framework via differential information forensics, appeared at ICML 2026.

  • Executive Chair, IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS) 2026.

  • GRID, our work on protecting training graphs from link stealing attacks, appeared at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

Publications

Preprints

  1. Principled Detection of Coordinated Manipulation from Aggregate Distortion and Account Reuse

    Qian Guo, Yidan Hu, and Rui Zhang

    arXiv:2609.13407, September 2026. arXiv PDF

  2. Channel-Calibrated Aggregate Monitoring for Coordinated Manipulation

    Rui Zhang

    University of Delaware Technical Report, September 2026. UDSpace

2026

  1. TrustSense: Structure-Adaptive Trust Inference for Resilient Cooperative IoT Sensing

    Ruobing Li, Yan (Ian) Zhang, Yan Zhang, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (ACM MobiHoc), Tokyo, Japan, November 2026. Accepted

  2. DataGuard: A Non-intrusive Dataset Auditing Framework via Differential Information Forensics

    Jiadong Lou, Wenxin Rong, Li Chen, Xing Gao, Rui Zhang, and Xu Yuan

    International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Seoul, South Korea, July 2026.

2025

  1. Byzantine-robust Federated Learning

    Zheyuan Liu, Yidan Hu, Aisha Aseeri, Depeng Li, and Rui Zhang

    International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Tokyo, Japan, August, 2025.

  2. Locally Differentially Private Frequency Estimation via Joint Randomized Response

    Ye Zheng, Shafizur Rahman Seeam, Yidan Hu, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETs), Washington DC, July 2025.

  3. GRID: Protecting Training Graph from Link Stealing Attacks on GNN Models

    Jiadong Lou, Xu Yuan, Rui Zhang, Xingliang Yuan, Neil Zhenqiang Gong, and Nian-Feng Tzeng

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, CA, May 2025.

2024

  1. Privacy-preserving ridesharing via probabilistic matching

    Tianye Ma, Yukun Dong, Yidan Hu, and Rui Zhang

    poster abstract, IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), Guangzhou, China, June 2024.

2023

  1. Freshness authentication for outsourced multi-version key-value stores

    Yidan Hu, Xin Yao, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 2071-2084, May-June 2023.

  2. Rhythmic RFID Authentication

    Jiawei Li, Chuyu Wang, Ang Li, Dianqi Han, Yan Zhang, Jinhang Zuo, Rui Zhang, Lei Xie, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 877-890, April 2023.

  3. VeriDedup: A verifiable cloud data deduplication scheme with integrity and duplication proof

    Xixun Yu, Hui Bai, Zhengyan, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 680-694, 1 Jan.-Feb. 2023.

  4. Locally differentially private and fair key-value aggregation

    Yukun Dong, Zhengwu Lu, and Rui Zhang

    International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology (SOICT), Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Dec., 2023.

  5. Authenticating outsourced location-based skyline queries under shortest path distance

    Yidan Hu, Yukun Dong, Wenxin Chen, Yingfei Dong, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Orlando, FL, Oct., 2023. Best Paper Award

  6. Location inference under temporal correlation

    Yukun Dong, Yidan Hu, Aisha Aseer, Depeng Li, and Rui Zhang

    International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Honolulu, HI, July, 2023.

  7. Sybil detection in Connected Vehicle systems via Angle-of-Arrival estimation

    Tianye Ma, Yidan Hu, Aisha Aseeri, Mark Nejad, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Operations, Services and Technologies (MOST), Detroit, MI, May, 2023.

Earlier publications 2009–2022 · Journal articles and conference papers

2022

  1. SpecKriging: GNN-based secure cooperative spectrum sensing

    Yan Zhang, Dianqi Han, Ang Li, Jiawei Li, Tao Li, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 21, no. 11, pp. 9936-9946, Nov. 2022.

  2. (In)secure acoustic mobile authentication

    Dianqi Han, Ang Li, Tao Li, Lili Zhang, Yan Zhang, Jiawei Li, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 21, no. 9, pp. 3193-3207, 1 Sept. 2022. PDF

  3. Locally differentially private quantile summary aggregation in wireless sensor networks

    Aishah Aseeri and Rui Zhang

    Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems (ACIIDS), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Nov., 2022.

  4. Continuous indoor tracking via differential RSS fingerprinting

    Yunzhi Li, Yidan Hu, Aisha Aseeri, Yukun Dong, and Rui Zhang

    International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS), Denver, CO, Oct., 2022.

  5. PriHorus: Privacy-preserving RSS-based indoor positioning

    Zhihua Hu, Yunzhi Li, Guosong Jiang, Rui Zhang, and Mande Xie

    IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Virtual, May, 2022.

  6. ImPos: An image-based indoor positioning system

    Yunzhi Li, Rajeswari Kambhamettu, Yidan Hu, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), Virtual, January, 2022. PDF

2021

  1. Verifiable query processing over outsourced social graph

    Xin Yao, Rui Zhang, Dingquan Huang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 2313-2326, Oct. 2021. PDF

  2. SecQSA: Secure sampling-based quantile summary aggregation in wireless sensor networks

    Aishah Aseeri and Rui Zhang

    International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN), Virtual, December, 2021. PDF

  3. Differential privacy-preserving user linkage across online social networks

    Xin Yao, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), Virtual, June, 2021. PDF

  4. Secure outsourced top-k selection queries against untrusted cloud service providers

    Xixun Yu, Yidan Hu, Rui Zhang, Zheng Yan, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), Virtual, June, 2021. PDF

  5. Your home is insecure: Practical attacks on wireless home alarm systems

    Tao Li, Dianqi Han, Jiawei Li, Ang Li, Yan Zhang, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Virtual, May, 2021. PDF

  6. Secure connected vehicle-based traffic signal systems against data spoofing attacks

    Tianye Ma, Rui Zhang, and Mark Nejad

    IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Nanjing, China, March-April, 2021. PDF

2020

  1. A spatiotemporal approach for secure crowdsourced Radio Environment Map construction

    Yidan Hu and Rui Zhang

    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 1790-1803, Aug. 2020. PDF

  2. IndoorWaze: A crowdsourcing-based context-aware indoor navigation system

    Tao Li, Dianqi Han, Yimin Cheng, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, Terri Hedgpeth

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 19, no. 8, pp. 5461-5472, Aug. 2020. PDF

  3. KV-Fresh: Freshness authentication for outsourced multi-version key-value stores

    Yidan Hu, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Online, July, 2020. PDF

  4. RF-Rhythm: Secure and usable two-factor RFID authentication

    Chuyu Wang, Ang Li, Jiawei Li, Dianqi Han, Yan Zhang, Jinhang Zuo, Rui Zhang, Lei Xie, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Online, July. 2020. PDF

  5. Data user-based attribute based encryption

    Ehsan Meamari, Hao Guo, Rui Zhang, and Chien-Chung Shen

    Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), Princeton, NJ, March, 2020.

2019

  1. Verifiable outsourced computation over encrypted data

    Xixun Yu, Zheng Yan, and Rui Zhang

    Information Sciences, vol. 479, pp. 372-385, April 2019. PDF

  2. A blockchain-based architecture for traffic signal control systems

    Wanxin Li, Mark Nejad, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE International Congress on Internet of Things (ICIOT), Milan, Italy, June. 2019. PDF

  3. Secure indoor positioning against signal strength attacks via optimized multi-voting

    Yunzhi Li, Yidan Hu, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Terri Hedgpeth

    IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), Phoenix, AZ, June. 2019. Best Paper Award Runner-up PDF

  4. Secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks: enumeration attack and countermeasure

    Aishah Aseeri and Rui Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium, Shanghai, China, May 2019. PDF

  5. Differentially-private incentive mechanism for crowdsourced Radio Environment Map construction

    Yidan Hu and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Paris, France, April-May 2019. PDF

2018

  1. Beware of what you share: Inferring user locations in Venmo

    Xin Yao, Yimin Chen, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Yaping Lin

    IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 5109-5118, Dec. 2018. PDF

  2. SpecGuard: Spectrum misuse detection in dynamic spectrum access systems

    Xiaocong Jin, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 17, no. 12, pp. 2925-2938, 1 Dec. 2018. PDF

  3. The rise of social botnets: Attacks and countermeasures

    Jinxue Zhang, Rui Zhang, Xiaocong Jin, Yanchao Zhang, and Guanhua Yan

    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 1068-1082, 1 Nov.-Dec. 2018. PDF

  4. Proximity-Proof: Secure and usable mobile two-factor authentication

    Dianqi Han, Yimin Chen, Tao Li, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Terri Hedgpeth

    ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom), New Delhi, India, October 2018. PDF

  5. Secure RSS-Fingerprint-Based Indoor Positioning: Attacks and Countermeasures

    Lizhou Yuan, Yidan Hu, Yunzhi Li, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Terri Hedgpeth

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Beijing, China, May-June 2018. PDF

  6. EyeTell: Video-assisted touchscreen keystroke inference from eye movements

    Yimin Chen, Tao Li, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Terri Hedgpeth

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2018 (SP), San Francisco, CA, May 2018. PDF

  7. Secure crowdsourced indoor positioning systems

    Tao Li, Yimin Chen, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Terri Hedgpeth

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Honolulu, HI, Apr. 2018. PDF

  8. Privacy-preserving social media data outsourcing

    Jinxue Zhang, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Xia Hu

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Honolulu, HI, Apr. 2018. PDF

2017

  1. A multi-secret value access control framework for airliner in multinational air traffic management

    Depeng Li, Rui Zhang, Yingfei Dong, Fangjin Zhu, and Dusko Pavlovic

    IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 1853-1867, Dec. 2017. PDF

  2. Secure crowdsourced Radio Environment Map construction

    Yidan Hu and Rui Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Toronto, Canada, Oct. 2017. PDF

  3. Your face your heart: Secure mobile face authentication with photoplethysmograms

    Yimin Chen, Jingchao Sun, Xiaocong Jin, Tao Li, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Atlanta, GA, May 2017. PDF

  4. POWERFUL: Mobile app fingerprinting via power analysis

    Yimin Chen, Xiaocong Jin, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Atlanta, GA, May 2017. PDF

  5. Verifiable social data outsourcing

    Xin Yao, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Yaping Lin

    IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Atlanta, GA, May 2017. PDF

2016

  1. Privacy-preserving spatiotemporal matching for secure device-to-device communications

    Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 1048-1060, Dec. 2016. PDF

  2. TrueTop: A sybil-resilient system for user influence measurement on Twitter

    Jinxue Zhang, Rui Zhang, Jingchao Sun, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 2834-2846, Oct. 2016. PDF

  3. SecureFind: Secure and privacy-preserving object finding via mobile crowdsourcing

    Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Xiaocong Jin, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 1716-1728, March 2016. PDF

  4. DPSense: Differentially private crowdsourced spectrum sensing

    Xiaocong Jin, Rui Zhang, Yimin Chen, Tao Li, and Yanchao Zhang

    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Vienna, Austria, October 2016. PDF

  5. A framework to mitigate airliner risk in air traffic management

    Depeng Li and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Philadelphia, PA, October 2016. PDF

  6. PriExpress: Privacy-preserving express delivery with fine-grained attribute-based access control

    Tao Li, Yanchao Zhang, and Rui Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Philadelphia, PA, October 2016. PDF

  7. Secure outsourced skyline query processing via untrusted cloud service providers

    Wenxin Chen, Mengjun Liu, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Shubo Liu

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), San Francisco, CA, April 2016. PDF

  8. PriStream: Privacy-preserving distributed stream monitoring of thresholded percentile statistics

    Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Jinxue Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), San Francisco, CA, April 2016. PDF

  9. VISIBLE: Video-assisted keystroke inference from tablet backside motion

    Jingchao Sun, Xiaocong Jin, Yimin Chen, Jinxue Zhang, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), San Diego, CA, February 2016. PDF

2015

  1. Jamming-resistant secure neighbor discovery in mobile ad hoc networks

    Rui Zhang, Jingchao Sun, Yanchao Zhang, and Xiaoxia Huang

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 5588-5601, Oct. 2015. PDF

  2. Secure top-k query processing via untrusted location-based service providers

    Rui Zhang, Jingchao Sun, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 111-124, January/February 2015. PDF

  3. SafeDSA: Safeguard dynamic spectrum access against fake secondary users

    Xiaocong Jin, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Denver, Colorado, October 2015. PDF

  4. Your actions tell where you are: Uncovering twitter users in a metropolitan area

    Jinxue Zhang, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Florence, Italy, September 2015. PDF

  5. SpecGuard: Spectrum misuse detection in dynamic spectrum access systems

    Xiaocong Jin, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Hong Kong, China, April 2015. PDF

  6. Your song your way: Rhythm-based two-factor authentication for multi-touch mobile devices

    Yimin Chen, Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Hong Kong, China, April 2015. PDF

2014

  1. Secure top-k query processing in unattended tiered sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, Yanchao Zhang, and Xiaoxia Hunag

    IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 63, no. 9, pp. 4681-4693, Nov. 2014. PDF

  2. TIGHT: A geographic routing protocol for cognitive radio mobile ad hoc networks

    Xiaocong Jin, Rui Zhang, Jingchao Sun, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 4670-4681, Aug. 2014. PDF

  3. TouchIn: Sightless two-factor authentication on multi-touch mobile devices

    Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, Jinxue Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), San Francisco, CA, October 2014. PDF

2013

  1. Privacy-preserving profile matching for proximity-based mobile social networking

    Rui Zhang, Jinxue Zhang, Jinyuan Sun, Yanchao Zhang, and Guanhua Yan

    IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special Issue on Emerging Technologies in Communications, vol. 31, no. 9, pp. 656-668, Sep. 2013. PDF

  2. Verifiable privacy-preserving aggregation in people-centric urban sensing systems

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special Issue on Emerging Technologies in Communications, vol. 31, no. 9, pp. 268-278, Sep. 2013. PDF

  3. On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation

    Jinxue Zhang, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Guanhua Yan

    IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Washington D.C., Oct. 2013. PDF

  4. Secure crowdsourcing-based cooperative spectrum sensing

    Rui Zhang, Jinxue Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Turin, Italy, Apr. 2013. PDF

  5. Privacy-preserving spatiotemporal matching

    Jingchao Sun, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Turin, Italy, Apr. 2013. PDF

2012

  1. Privacy-preserving distributed access control in sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Kui Ren

    IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 23, no. 8, pp. 1427-1438, Aug. 2012. PDF

  2. Secure cooperative data storage and query processing in unattended tiered sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, Yanchao Zhang, and Jinyuan Sun

    IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special Issue on Cooperative Networking Challenges and Applications, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 433-441, Feb. 2012. PDF

  3. Secure top-k query processing via untrusted location-based service providers

    Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Chi Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Orlando, FL, Mar. 2012. PDF

  4. Fine-grained private matching for proximity-based mobile social networking

    Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, Jinyuan Sun, and Guanhua Yan

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Orlando, FL, Mar. 2012. PDF

2011

  1. AOS: An anonymous overlay system for mobile ad hoc networks

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, Yanchao Zhang, and Yuguang Fang

    ACM Wireless Networks, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 843-859, May 2011. PDF

  2. A spatiotemporal approach for secure range queries in tiered sensor networks

    Jing Shi, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 264-273, Jan. 2011.

  3. Fast identification of the missing tags in a large-scale RFID system

    Rui Zhang, Yunzhong Liu, Yanchao Zhang, and Jinyuan Sun

    IEEE Communication Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON), Salt Lake City, UT, June 2011. PDF

2010

  1. LR-Seluge: Loss-resilient and secure code dissemination in wireless sensor networks

    Rui Zhang and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Minneapolis, MN, June 2010. PDF

  2. JR-SND: Jamming-resilient secure neighbor discovery in mobile ad hoc networks

    Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Xiaoxia Huang

    IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Minneapolis, MN, June 2010. PDF

  3. Traffic inference in anonymous MANETs

    Yunzhong Liu, Rui Zhang, Jing Shi and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE Communication Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON), Boston, MA, June 2010. PDF

  4. Wormhole-resilient secure neighbor discovery in underwater acoustic networks

    Rui Zhang and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), San Diego, CA, Mar. 2010. PDF

  5. Verifiable fine-grained top-k queries in tiered sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, Yunzhong Liu, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), San Diego, CA, Mar. 2010. PDF

  6. PriSense: privacy-preserving data aggregation in people-centric urban sensing systems

    Jing Shi, Rui Zhang, Yunzhong Liu, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), San Diego, CA, Mar. 2010. PDF

2009

  1. Secure multidimensional range queries in tiered sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Jing Shi, and Yanchao Zhang

    ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc), New Orleans, LA, USA, May 2009. PDF

  2. DP2AC: distributed privacy-preserving access control in sensor networks

    Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, and Kui Ren

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Apr. 2009. PDF

  3. Secure range queries in tiered sensor networks

    Jing Shi, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Apr. 2009. PDF

Additional

  1. Privacy preserving collaborative machine learning

    Zheyuan Liu, Rui Zhang, and Yanchao Zhang

    EAI Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety, 8 (28), e3. PDF

Funding

NSF research grants

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Dynamic Spectrum Access

PI at UD · 2023–2026 · CNS-2325564
$600,000 total · $200,000 UD share

Trustworthy Hierarchical Edge Computing

PI at UD · 2019–2023 · Project details · CNS-1933047
$500,000 total · $250,000 UD share

Secure Mobile Cloud Sensing

Sole PI · 2017–2021 · CNS-1718078 · $500,000

CAREER: Secure Database-Driven Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

Sole PI · 2017–2023 · CNS-1651954 · $500,000

Additional grants

Secure and Usable Indoor Navigation for Individuals with Visual Impairment

PI at UD · 2015–2019 · CNS-1514014
$800,000 total · $250,000 UD share

Secure and Usable Mobile Authentication for People with Visual Impairment

PI at UD · 2014–2018 · CNS-1422301
$499,999 total · $149,999 UD share

NSF Student Travel Grant · ACM MobiCom 2024

PI · 2024–2025 · CNS-2438050 · $20,000

NSF Student Travel Grant · ACM SOSR 2020

PI · 2020–2023 · CNS-2011914

NSF Student Travel Grant · IEEE CNS 2020

PI · 2020–2022 · CNS-2011840

Students

Current Ph.D. students

Sulaiman Alzahrani
Fall 2025–present
Qian Guo
Fall 2024–present

Alumni

Zheyuan Liu
Ph.D., Summer 2024
Tianye Ma
Ph.D., Spring 2024
Yukun Dong
Ph.D., Summer 2023
Yunzhi Li
Ph.D., Summer 2022
Aishah Aseeri
Ph.D., Winter 2022
Yidan Hu
Ph.D., Spring 2021
Lizhou Yuan
M.S., Fall 2018

Prospective students. I welcome inquiries from motivated students interested in my research. Please email me your CV, transcripts, and a brief description of your research interests. Visiting scholars and students are also welcome.

Teaching

Selected courses taught · University of Delaware

CISC 320Introduction to Algorithms
Fall 2024, 2021
CISC 621Algorithm Design and Analysis
Fall 2025, 2020, 2019
CISC 450 / CPEG 419Computer Networks I
Spring 2025, 2022, 2020, 2019 · Fall 2017
CISC 464 / 664Introduction to Network Security
Spring 2026, 2025, 2023, 2019, 2018 · Fall 2016
CISC 859Advanced Topics: Network Security
Fall 2018 · Spring 2017
University of Hawaii courses
EE 205Object Oriented Programming
Spring 2016, 2015, 2014
EE 602Algorithm I
Fall 2015, 2014, 2013

Service

Editorial appointments

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking

Editor · 2024–present

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing

Associate Editor · 2021–present

Wireless Networks

Editorial Board · 2019–present

EAI Transactions on Safety and Security

Co-Editor-in-Chief · 2022–2023
Editorial Board · 2019–2022

IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Associate Editor · 2016–2019

Recent conference leadership

IEEE CNS 2026

Executive Chair

ICCCN 2025

TPC Track Co-Chair · Security, Privacy, and Trust

IEEE CNS 2024

TPC Co-Chair

IEEE INFOCOM 2023 & 2024

Demo/Posters Co-Chair

ACM MobiCom 2024

Student Travel Grant Chair

IEEE CNS 2023 · ACM/IEEE SEC 2023

Workshop Co-Chair · Local Arrangement Chair
Additional professional service
  • NSF Panelist, 2015–2024
  • Distinguished TPC Member, IEEE INFOCOM 2016/2018/2025
  • TPC Track Co-Chair, IEEE MASS 2022; Poster & Demos Co-Chair, EAI MobiQuitous 2022
  • Student Travel Grant Co-Chair, IEEE CNS 2020 and 2022; Student Travel Grant Chair, ACM SOSR 2020
  • Poster Co-Chair, IEEE DySPAN 2019; Web Co-Chair, IEEE INFOCOM 2018 and 2019
  • General Co-Chair, Information Security Conference 2016; Steering Committee member, Information Security Conference
  • Local Arrangement Co-Chair, ACM MobiCom 2014
  • Technical Program Committees include IEEE INFOCOM (2014–2027), IEEE CNS (2014–2023), IEEE/ACM IWQoS (2019–2020), ACM WiSec (2019–2020), ACM MobiHoc (2018), IEEE ICDE (2017), and VLDB Demo Track (2017).
  • Reviewer for journals including ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks; IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking; IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing; IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing; IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security; and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.
  • Member of ACM, ACM SIGMOBILE, IEEE, and IEEE ComSoc

Contact

Email & phone

ruizhang@udel.edu
302-831-2010

Office

FinTech 316A
591 Collaboration Way
Newark, DE 19713