Alan Liu Receives Department of Defense Research Award

University of Maryland Department of Computer Science Assistant Professor Alan Zaoxing Liu has received a $1.3 million research award from the U.S. Department of Defense through the Army Contracting Command to support his project on “Approximation-First Telemetry for Resource Efficient Situational Awareness in Tactical Networks.” With this research award, Liu aims to collaborate with the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to generate new ideas and technologies in dynamic data processing systems.

The two-year project will focus on developing computing systems that efficiently process large-scale data while reducing resource consumption. Liu’s research centers on approximation-first computing techniques, which offer tradeoffs between precision and performance to support cost-effective and sustainable computing in bandwidth-constrained or resource-limited environments.

“This award supports our ongoing and future efforts to design systems that reduce resource overhead and communication burden while still delivering the situational awareness needed in dynamic environments,” Liu said. “It’s an honor to have this research recognized by the Department of Defense.”

The Army Contracting Command supports a wide range of mission areas for the U.S. Army, including research and development, cyber and communications, testing, sustainment and soldier readiness. It serves as a central hub for contracting and procurement operations, interfacing with industry partners to meet Army needs through advanced technologies and efficient acquisition strategies.

Liu’s work aims to align with these priorities by exploring how approximation techniques can improve tactical networks' data management and processing capabilities. Such networks often operate under limited power, bandwidth and computing capabilities, requiring solutions that prioritize essential information and minimize delays or overhead. 

“The broader implications of this work lie in how we manage and process data in a world that’s increasingly data-saturated,” Liu said. “The methods we are developing could potentially support both military and civilian applications, especially in areas where resources are constrained or where data must be handled efficiently.”

Liu joined the University of Maryland faculty in 2023 from Boston University, where he served as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. He directed the FROOT Lab, a research group focused on building faster, more adaptable to future demands and more secure systems. Before his faculty role at Boston University, Liu received a Ph.D. in computer science from Johns Hopkins University in 2018 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab.

Academic communities have recognized Liu’s prior work through honors such as the Best Paper Award at the USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, a “Best of Rest” award from the USENIX Annual Technical Conference and a plenary talk at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Theory of Computing.

—Story by Samuel Malede Zewdu, CS Communications