Lixia Zhang

Lixia Zhang is the Jonathan B. Postel Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her expertise is in computer networks; she helped found the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed the Resource Reservation Protocol, and pioneered the development of named data networking. She earned a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1981 at California State University, Los Angeles, After working as a researcher at Xerox PARC, she moved to UCLA in 1996. She was also a member of the Internet Architecture Board, from 1994 to 1996 and again from 2005 to 2009. During the 20th anniversary for the initial IETF meeting in 2006, Zhang was interviewed by the IETF Journal, published on May 7, 2006.

A protocol she designed for changing the settings in an experimental network setup became the basis for the Resource Reservation Protocol.

In 1999

Awards and honors In 2006, Zhang became a Fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for contributions to the architecture and signaling protocols in packet switched networks.

In 2009, she won the IEEE Internet Award.

In 2012, she was named to the Postel Professorship. Her picture appeared on the four of diamonds in a pack of playing cards featuring 54 notable women in technology.

In 2020, she won the 2020 SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award, while in 2021 she was inducted to the Internet Hall of Fame.

In 2025, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.