Dr. Zhang is a visionary leader who has been leading research, product development, and corporate strategy development, which have generated disruptive technologies and products in connected and automated vehicles, fog/edge computing, AI/ML-based networks, distributed ML, 5G/6G networks, IoT, and optical networks.

As the CTO for the Smart Connected Vehicles Business Unit at Cisco Systems, he led the creation of the business unit and led it to turn Cisco from being little known in connected vehicles to a serious player.

As a senior executive in Cisco’s Corporate Strategy Group, he drove strategies on fog computing (more widely known as edge computing now) that became a pillar for the company’s cloud and IoT businesses. He led co-innovation programs, which partnered with the industry and academia to develop new technologies on fog/edge computing, connected and autonomous vehicles, and machine learning based anomaly detection and incident response solutions for IoT systems.