 ALUMNI PROFILES
 An Innovative Researcher:
Haitao (Heather) Zheng
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
University of California Santa Barbara
B.S., Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, 1995
M.S., Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, 1998
Ph.D., Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, 1999
"You can only do good work if you are passionate about it."
Haitao (Heather) Zheng is an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of California Santa Barbara. In 2005, she was named one of the nation’s top 35 innovators under age 35 by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. The annual recognition s intended by the magazine’s editors to identify outstanding inventors, discoverers, and entrepreneurs whose “achievements will shape the world we live in for decades to come.”
In 2006, Zheng was again recognized by MIT's Technology Review when her research in cognitive radio was included in the magazine's Ten Emerging Technologies, which was intended to serve as a short list of technological innovations "ready to have a big impact on business, medicine, and culture."
Zheng earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland in 1999 at the age of 24. She was advised by Professor K. J. Ray Liu. As a student at Maryland, she received an Outstanding Grad Student Award from the Institute of Systems Research (ISR), and the Bell Labs President Gold Medal for her work in the Wireless Communications Research Lab. She was later recruited to Microsoft Research in China.
At 15, Haitao Zheng stood out at China’s competitive Xian Jiaotong University for both her youth and her brilliance. She conducted research in wireless and networking area at Bell-Labs (NJ, U.S.A) and Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing, P. R. China) during 1999-2005. She became an assistant professor in computer science at UCSB in September 2005.
Q & A with Heather:
Q. Can you name one or two of the most valuable things that you learned in the University of Maryland's Electrical Engineering program that helped prepare you for your current career?
Relax your mind; think out of the box.
Q. What advice would you offer to incoming students to get the most out of their experiences here?
You can only do good work if you are passionate about it.
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