About

• I am now a final year Ph.D. candidate at sysnet Group, UCSD, working with Prof. Aaron Schulman. I am also working closely with sevral amazing researchers at CAIDA and WCSNG. Before coming to UCSD, I worked in IIoT Group, SJTU, advised by Prof. Luoyi Fu and Prof. Xingbin Wang. I received my bachelor degree of Cyber Security from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU).


• I'm highly interested in Mobile networking, Internet Measurement, Internet of Things, Edge computing and Security. See my CV for more information.

Publications

• Marionette Measurement: Measurement Support under the PacketLab Model
  Tzu-Bin Yan, Zesen Zhang, Bradley Huffaker, Ricky Mok, KC Claffy, Kirill Levchenko;
  To appear on Passive and Active Measurement (PAM) conference 2025
  


• Empirical Characterization of Ookla's Speed Test Platform: Analyzing Server Deployment, Policy Impact, and User Coverage
  Zesen Zhang, Jiting Shen, Ricky Mok;
  Proceedings of Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference(CCWC) 2024
  [Paper]
  


• Poster: Empirically Testing the PacketLab Model
  Tzu-Bin Yan, Zesen Zhang, Bradley Huffaker, Ricky Mok, kc claffy, Kirill Levchenko;
  Proceedings of ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2023(IMC)
  [Paper] [Website]
  


• Investigating the Sustainability of the 5G Base Station Overhaul in the United States
  Zesen Zhang*, Leila Scola*, Aaron Schulman;
  Proceedings of the ICT for Sustainability 2023
  [Paper] [Video]
  


• Access Denied: Assessing Physical Risks to Internet Access Networks
  Alexander Marder, Zesen Zhang, Ricky Mok, Ramakrishna Padmanabhan, Bradley Huffaker, Matthew Luckie, Alberto Dainotti, kc claffy, Alex C. Snoeren and Aaron Schulman;
  Proceedings of USENIX Security 2023
  [Paper]


• Poster: PacketLab - Tools Alpha Release and Demo
  Tzu-Bin Yan, Michael Chen, Anthea Chen, Zesen Zhang, Bradley Huffaker, Ricky Mok, Kirill Levchenko, kc claffy;
  Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2022(IMC)
  [Paper] [Poster] [Website]
  


• Inferring Regional Access Network Topologies: Methods and Applications
  Zesen Zhang, Alexander Marder, Ricky Mok, Bradley Huffaker, Matthew Luckie, k claffy, Aaron Schulman;
  Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021 (IMC)
  [Paper][Video]


• Unraveling Impact of Critical Sensing Range on Mobile Camera Sensor Networks
  Xiaoying Gan, Zesen Zhang, Luoyi Fu, Xinbing Wang;
  Accepted by the Transactions on Mobile Computing
  [Paper]


• Joint Optimization of Multicast Energy in Delay-constrained Mobile Wireless Networks
  Fu, Luoyi; Fu, Xinzhe; Zhang, Zesen; Xu, Zhiying; Wu, Xudong; Wang, Xinbing; Lu, Songwu
  Accepted by the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
  [Paper]

Teaching

• TA at CSE 123: Computer Networks

Internship

Research Intern at AT&T Lab, Network Resiliency and Reliability Team.

• Manager: Deon Whitlock
• Time: June 26th - Sep. 3rd 2023

Contribution:

• Designed and implemented an automated analysis tool aimed at visualizing secondary and subsequent consequences arising from a single point of failure within the entire AT&T network.
• Leveraged PySpark to analyze the entire AT&T network’s equipment and generated a dataset that outlines the child effects based on logical circuit.
• Utilized Palantir platform to develop a self-contained system for presenting downstream effects associ- ated with individual network components.
• Collaborated with internal clients to seamlessly integrate the tool into their projects.

Research Intern at AT&T Lab, Network Resiliency and Reliability Team.

• Manager: Deon Whitlock
• Time: June 27th - Sep. 3rd 2022 Extended Sep. 3rd - Sep 16th 2022

Contribution:

• Developed Risk Aggregation Framework.
• Wrote a whitepaper for the framework.
• Proposed the framework to be a five year project
• Present the project to the Vice President to create the project.
• Applied an AT&T pattern for the project (Under review).