Zhen Zhang

Zhen is an associate professor in the ECE Department. From August 2017 to June 2024, he was an assistant professor. His research is formal verification, which advances principled methods in the computer-aided design of complex systems to achieve provable safety and reliability guarantees. His two research areas are (1) theories, algorithms, and tools for scalable probabilistic verification and (2) modeling and analysis of real-world system designs in synthetic biology, biochemical reaction networks, computer hardware, and deep neural networks. He has taught 28 computer engineering courses since joining USU in 2017. Zhen has mentored twenty-one undergraduate students, and nine of them continued to attend graduate school, including the two PhD and two MS students currently working in his research group. He has actively engaged undergraduates early in participating in research activities in formal verification. The research work performed by his undergraduate students has resulted in publications in competitive international formal verification venues, as well as leading synthetic biology journals. In addition, his students have received multiple awards from the College of Engineering and the ECE Department in recent years, including two College of Engineering Undergraduate Researcher of the Year awards and three ECE Undergraduate Researcher of the Year awards.