Jinghao Zhao.

ENGINEER & DESIGNER

From the network to the cloud.
Building systems where every moment matters.

Explore my work A little about me
SCROLL TO EXPLORE

01 / CURRENT FOCUS

Cloud scale. Bare metal precision.

Google Cloud · GCE Bare Metal

Bare metal.
Cloud, end to end.

I’m a software engineer on Google’s GCE Bare Metal team. I think about bare metal end to end: how compute, networking, storage, and the control plane fit together into a cloud platform.

My perspective is grounded in the architecture of the whole system—the connections between physical infrastructure, machine lifecycle, and cloud services that make dedicated hardware reliable and usable at scale.

COMPUTE / CONTROL / CONNECT
BARE METAL CONTROL PLANE CLOUD SERVICES
Physical infrastructure. Cloud architecture.Conceptual illustration
01

Compute & I/O

The physical foundations: processors, networking, and storage.

02

Control plane

Provisioning, orchestration, and the machine lifecycle.

03

System behavior

Reliability, operability, and performance across layers.

IN PRACTICE / SELECTED WORK

Google Cloud ×
CME Group

Ultra-low-latency trading

One application of this platform-level work is the low-latency trading platform I work on as part of the Google Cloud and CME Group collaboration.

The collaboration brings dedicated bare metal compute and deterministic networking to financial markets—combining the precision of physical infrastructure with the flexibility of the cloud.

Read the Google Cloud story CME migration update · Oct 2026

Platform context from public Google Cloud and CME Group materials.

02 / A LITTLE ABOUT ME

Systems thinker.
Curious by design.

I build at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, networking, and real-world systems.

Today, that means GCE Bare Metal at Google. Before that, I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, advised by Prof. Songwu Lu, and my B.S. in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

My research spans networked systems, network security, edge and cloud computing, and mobile networks. A common thread: understanding how systems behave, then making them work better.

View my CV Connect on LinkedIn
Jinghao Zhao
Jinghao ZhaoENGINEER & DESIGNER
NOWGoogleGCE Bare Metal
RESEARCHUCLAPh.D. · Computer Science
FOUNDATIONSShanghai Jiao TongB.S. · Electronic Engineering

03 / SELECTED PROJECTS

Ideas, made real.

From the SIM in your pocket
to the systems behind the screen.

MOBILE SYSTEMSSIGCOMM ’22

SEED

A SIM-based solution to diagnose and handle 5G failures, bringing better visibility into the mobile network.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
SEED: how it works A device reports a failure to the SEED SIM applet. SIM and core-network diagnosis inform a recovery action.
  1. 01Report
  2. 02Diagnose
  3. 03Recover
From a failure report to a targeted recovery action.
Read the paper
NETWORK SECURITYMOBICOM ’21

SecureSIM

Rethinking SIM and eSIM authentication with fine-grained access control, informed by vulnerabilities in existing practice.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
SecureSIM: how it works A certificate is authenticated, a request is checked against permissions, and authorized access reaches the SIM service.
  1. 01Authenticate
  2. 02Authorize
  3. 03Access
A trusted identity. Precisely scoped access.
Read the paper
AI / DEVELOPER TOOLS01

GPT-Code-Learner

Explore and learn a code repository interactively with GPT.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
GPT-Code-Learner: how it works Source code is searched by the context toolkit. The question and relevant repository context inform a GPT explanation.
  1. 01Search
  2. 02Build context
  3. 03Explain
Follow a question from the repository to an explanation.
Explore on GitHub
OPEN SOURCE / NB-IOT02

Sonica

An open NB-IoT research platform that communicates with off-the-shelf devices.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
Sonica: how it works A commodity NB-IoT device communicates over the air with a software-defined eNodeB and a CIoT-enabled core, enabling network research.
  1. 01Connect
  2. 02Exchange
  3. 03Experiment
Real devices. An open network. Room to experiment.
Explore on GitHub
SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKS03

Flora

A flexible 4G LTE/5G platform without commodity SIMs, chipsets, or dedicated infrastructure equipment.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
Flora: how it works A configurable eSIM profile connects through the software-defined LTE RAN and core to an edge VR application, with network analytics across the platform.
  1. 01Configure
  2. 02Connect
  3. 03Observe
Connect the profile, network, and edge application.
Explore the project
LOW LATENCY / MOBILE VR04

Less delay. More immersion.

Device-based LTE latency reduction at the application layer, demonstrated through mobile VR.

HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
Less delay. More immersion.: how it works Mobile VR sends motion to an edge renderer and receives rendered frames. Application-layer inference, DRX doze reduction, and proactive scheduling prepare the uplink ahead of data arrival. Timing is illustrative, not a benchmark.
  1. 01Sense
  2. 02Prepare uplink
  3. 03Render
Anticipate the uplink. Keep the motion-to-frame loop moving.
Read the NSDI ’21 paper
KNOWLEDGE / VISUALIZATION05

A map of ideas.

Acemap makes academic discovery visual—connecting research topics and helping people find their way to relevant papers.

Explore Acemap
HOW IT WORKSConceptual walkthrough
Preview of the Acemap academic topic map. Load the interactive map to explore research fields.
  1. 01Discover
  2. 02Connect
  3. 03Explore
Find a topic. Discover a wider field of ideas.

Explore 2,208 research topics in the interactive map.

04 / PUBLICATIONS

Research, in depth.

Full CV

12 publications · 2019–2023

Conference publications

2023

Sign-to-911: Enabling 911 Service for Sign Language Users on Assistive AR Glasses

Yunqi Guo, Jinghao Zhao, Boyan Ding, Congkai Tan, Weichong Lin, Zhaowei Tan, Hongzhe Du, Jennifer Miyaki, Songwu Lu.

ACM MobiCom 2023.

2023

CellDAM: User-Space, Rootless Detection and Mitigation for 5G Data Plane

Zhaowei Tan, Jinghao Zhao, Boyan Ding, Songwu Lu.

USENIX NSDI 2023.

2022

5G Messaging: System Insecurity and Defenses

Jinghao Zhao, Qianru Li, Zengwen Yuan, Zhehui Zhang, Songwu Lu.

IEEE CNS 2022.

2021

Data-Plane Signaling in Cellular IoT: Attacks and Defense

Zhaowei Tan, Boyan Ding, Jinghao Zhao, Yunqi Guo, Songwu Lu.

ACM MobiCom 2021.

2021

Experience: A Five-Year Retrospective of MobileInsight

Yuanjie Li, Chunyi Peng, Zhehui Zhang, Zhaowei Tan, Haotian Deng, Jinghao Zhao, Qianru Li, Yunqi Guo, Kai Ling, Boyan Ding, Hewu Li, Songwu Lu.

ACM MobiCom 2021.

2019

Skip The Question You Don’t Know: An Embedding Space Approach

Kaiyuan Chen, Jinghao Zhao.

IJCNN 2019.

Journal publications

2023

LDRP: Device-Centric Latency Diagnostic and Reduction for Cellular Networks without Root

Zhaowei Tan, Jinghao Zhao, Yuanjie Li, Yifei Xu, Songwu Lu.

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC) 2023.

2022

Movement-Based Reliable Mobility Management for Beyond 5G Cellular Networks

Zhehui Zhang, Yuanjie Li, Qianru Li, Jinghao Zhao, Ghufran Baig, Lili Qiu, Songwu Lu.

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) 2022.

2022

Breaking Cellular IoT with Forged Data-Plane Signaling: Attacks and Countermeasure

Zhaowei Tan, Boyan Ding, Jinghao Zhao, Yunqi Guo, Songwu Lu.

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN) 2022.

ALWAYS CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT’S NEXT

Good things start
with a conversation.

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