School of Software Technology · Zhejiang University

Hailiang Zhao

ZJU 100 Young Professor

I study performance optimization for intelligent computing systems, with current interests in agentic services, generative AI runtime, and cloud-edge intelligence.

Ningbo & Hangzhou, China · hliangzhao@zju.edu.cn

Open positionsGoogle Scholar ↗
Recent news

Updates

  • Armor, a missing-aware multimodal fusion system for unified microservice incident management, is accepted at ASE ’26.

  • Agentic Services Computing presents a service-computing perspective on systems centered on autonomous agents.

  • Towards Optimal Robustness in Learning-Augmented Paging receives an ICML ’26 Spotlight.

Research

Algorithms and systems for intelligent services.

I work across online optimization, systems, and machine learning for the deployment, coordination, and operation of intelligent services.

Learning-augmented systemsAgentic servicesGenerative AI systemsCloud-edge intelligence
01 · GENERATIVE AI SYSTEMS

Robust and efficient runtime optimization

We study KV-cache management, model compression, and SLO-aware scheduling for large language and diffusion models under dynamic and heterogeneous workloads.

02 · CLOUD-EDGE INTELLIGENCE

Resource scheduling and service coordination

We design algorithms and systems for heterogeneous cloud-edge platforms that jointly improve performance, reliability, and efficiency.

03 · AGENTIC SERVICES

Reliable systems for autonomous agents

We study runtime, incident-management, and resource-control mechanisms for agent-centered service platforms.

Selected research contributions

Online optimization, generative AI, and agentic services.

NeurIPS ’24 · NeurIPS ’25 · ICML ’26 Spotlight

Learning-augmented online algorithms

PFSUM studies the Bahncard problem, a classical online rent-or-buy problem. Guard and RPB study robust learning-augmented caching and paging with imperfect predictions.

PFSUM ↗Guard ↗RPB ↗
CVPR ’26 · arXiv

Structure-aware efficiency for diffusion models

SegQuant studies semantic-aware quantization. Shiva-DiT develops differentiable selection for efficient diffusion transformers.

SegQuant ↗Shiva-DiT ↗
Agentic Services · ASE ’26

Agentic service computing and incident management

We study agent-centered service platforms and system support for microservice incident management. Recent work includes Agentic Services Computing and Armor.

Agentic Services Computing ↗Armor ↗
Join the group

Students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty.

One PhD position is available for the 2027 cohort. Please email a CV and a brief introduction.

Faculty & postdoctoral positions

Faculty and postdoctoral positions

Applicants working on AI systems, systems optimization, or related areas are welcome.

Contact me
PhD & master’s students

PhD opening for 2027

Research interests include agentic services, generative AI systems, cloud-edge intelligence, and optimization.

Ask about supervision
Publications

Selected papers

“†” denotes equal contribution; “*” denotes corresponding author. For the complete and most up-to-date record, see Google Scholar ↗.

  1. ASE ’26 · Accepted

    ARMOR: Missing-Aware Multimodal Fusion for Unified Microservice Incident Management

    Wenzhuo Qian, Hailiang Zhao*, Ziqi Wang, Zhipeng Gao, Jiayi Chen, Zhiwei Ling, and Shuiguang Deng*.

  2. ICML ’26 · Spotlight

    Towards Optimal Robustness in Learning-Augmented Paging

    Peng Chen, Hailiang Zhao*, Xueyan Tang, Yixuan Wang, and Shuiguang Deng*.

  3. CVPR ’26

    SegQuant: A Semantics-Aware and Generalizable Quantization Framework for Diffusion Models

    Jiaji Zhang, Ruichao Sun, Hailiang Zhao*, Jiaju Wu, Peng Chen, Hao Li, Yuying Liu, Kingsum Chow, Gang Xiong, and Shuiguang Deng*. Project ↗

  4. IEEE TSC · 2025

    PeerSync: Accelerating Containerized Model Inference at the Network Edge

    Yinuo Deng†, Hailiang Zhao†*, Dongjing Wang, Peng Chen, Wenzhuo Qian, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Shuiguang Deng*.

  5. NeurIPS ’25

    Robustifying Learning-Augmented Caching Efficiently without Compromising 1-Consistency

    Peng Chen, Hailiang Zhao*, Jiaji Zhang, Xueyan Tang, Yixuan Wang, and Shuiguang Deng*. Poster ↗

  6. CVPR ’25

    CADRef: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Class-Aware Decoupled Relative Feature Leveraging

    Zhiwei Ling, Yachen Chang, Hailiang Zhao*, Xinkui Zhao, Kingsum Chow*, and Shuiguang Deng. Code ↗

  7. NeurIPS ’24

    Learning-Augmented Algorithms for the Bahncard Problem

    Hailiang Zhao, Xueyan Tang*, Peng Chen, and Shuiguang Deng. Code ↗ · Slides ↗

  8. IEEE TSC · 2025

    Online Workload Scheduling for Social Welfare Maximization in the Computing Continuum

    Hailiang Zhao, Ziqi Wang, Guanjie Cheng*, Wenzhuo Qian, Peng Chen, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya.

  9. IEEE TSC · 2025

    CATScaler: A Convolution-Augmented Transformer Scaling Framework for Cloud-Native Applications

    Fan'an Meng, Hongjun Dai*, Guoqing Cong, Bo Zhu, and Hailiang Zhao.

  10. ACM TAAS · 2025

    Tail-Learning: Adaptive Learning Method for Mitigating Tail Latency in Autonomous Edge Systems

    Cheng Zhang, Yinuo Deng, Hailiang Zhao*, Tianlv Chen, and Shuiguang Deng*.

  11. Proceedings of the IEEE · 2024

    Cloud-Native Computing: A Survey from the Perspective of Services

    Shuiguang Deng*, Hailiang Zhao*, Bingbing Huang, Cheng Zhang, Feiyi Chen, Yinuo Deng, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya. Cover Paper

  12. IEEE TSC · 2024

    Scheduling Multi-Server Jobs with Sublinear Regrets via Online Learning

    Hailiang Zhao, Xueyan Tang*, Peng Chen, Jianwei Yin, and Shuiguang Deng.

  13. IEEE TPDS · 2023

    Learning to Schedule Multi-Server Jobs with Fluctuated Processing Speeds

    Hailiang Zhao, Shuiguang Deng*, Zhengzhe Xiang, Xueqiang Yan, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya.

  14. IEEE TPDS · 2022

    Dependent Function Embedding for Distributed Serverless Edge Computing

    Shuiguang Deng, Hailiang Zhao, Zhengzhe Xiang, Cheng Zhang, Rong Jiang, Ying Li*, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya.

  15. IEEE TMC · 2022

    DPoS: Decentralized, Privacy-Preserving, and Low-Complexity Online Slicing for Multi-Tenant Networks

    Hailiang Zhao, Shuiguang Deng*, Zijie Liu, Zhengzhe Xiang, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya. Trending Paper

  16. IEEE TSC · 2022

    Distributed Redundant Placement for Microservice-based Applications at the Edge

    Hailiang Zhao, Shuiguang Deng*, Zijie Liu, Zhengzhe Xiang, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya. ESI Highly Cited Paper

  17. IEEE Internet of Things Journal · 2020

    Edge Intelligence: The Confluence of Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence

    Shuiguang Deng, Hailiang Zhao, Weijia Fang*, Jianwei Yin, Schahram Dustdar, and Albert Y. Zomaya. ESI Hot & Highly Cited Paper

  18. IEEE ICWS · 2019

    A Mobility-aware Cross-edge Computation Offloading Framework for Partitionable Applications

    Hailiang Zhao, Shuiguang Deng*, Cheng Zhang, Wei Du, Qiang He, and Jianwei Yin. Best Student Paper

Show additional selected publications and preprints

  1. Agentic Services Computing

    Shuiguang Deng*, Hailiang Zhao*, Ziqi Wang, Guanjie Cheng, Peng Chen, Wenzhuo Qian, Zhiwei Ling, Jianwei Yin, Albert Y. Zomaya, and Schahram Dustdar. arXiv preprint.

  2. Shiva-DiT: Residual-Based Differentiable Top-k Selection for Efficient Diffusion Transformers

    Jiaji Zhang, Hailiang Zhao*, Guoxuan Zhu, Ruichao Sun, Jiaju Wu, Xinkui Zhao, Hanlin Tang, Weiyi Lu, Kan Liu, Tao Lan, Lin Qu, and Shuiguang Deng*. arXiv preprint.

  3. Adaptive Dual-Weighting Framework for Federated Learning via Out-of-Distribution Detection

    Zhiwei Ling, Hailiang Zhao*, Chao Zhang, Xiang Ao, Ziqi Wang, Cheng Zhang, Zhen Qin, Xinkui Zhao, Kingsum Chow*, Yuanqing Wu, and MengChu Zhou. arXiv preprint.

  4. Morphis: SLO-Aware Resource Scheduling for Microservices with Time-Varying Call Graphs

    Yu Tang†, Hailiang Zhao†*, Chuansheng Lu, Yifei Zhang, Kingsum Chow*, Shuiguang Deng, and Rui Shi. arXiv preprint.

  5. Industrial Data-Service-Knowledge Governance: Toward Integrated and Trusted Intelligence for Industry 5.0

    Hailiang Zhao, Ziqi Wang, Daojiang Hu, Zhiwei Ling, Wenzhuo Qian, Jiahui Zhai, Yuhao Yang, Zhipeng Gao, Mingyi Liu, Kai Di, Xinkui Zhao, Zhongjie Wang, Jianwei Yin, MengChu Zhou, and Shuiguang Deng. arXiv preprint.

  6. TrackTeller: Temporal Multimodal 3D Grounding for Behavior-Dependent Object References

    Jiahong Yu†, Ziqi Wang†, Hailiang Zhao*, Wei Zhai, Xueqiang Yan, and Shuiguang Deng. arXiv preprint.

  7. OmniFuser: Adaptive Multimodal Fusion for Service-Oriented Predictive Maintenance

    Ziqi Wang, Hailiang Zhao*, Yuhao Yang, Daojiang Hu, Cheng Bao, Mingyi Liu, Kai Di, Schahram Dustdar, Zhongjie Wang, and Shuiguang Deng. arXiv preprint.

  8. Toward Robust and Efficient ML-Based GPU Caching for Modern Inference

    Peng Chen, Jiaji Zhang, Hailiang Zhao*, Yirong Zhang, Jiahong Yu, Xueyan Tang, Yixuan Wang, Hao Li, Jianping Zou, Gang Xiong, Kingsum Chow, Shuibing He, and Shuiguang Deng*. arXiv preprint.

  9. XFMNet: Decoding Cross-Site and Nonstationary Water Patterns via Stepwise Multimodal Fusion for Long-Term Water Quality Forecasting

    Ziqi Wang, Hailiang Zhao*, Cheng Bao, Wenzhuo Qian, Yuhao Yang, Xueqiang Sun, and Shuiguang Deng*. arXiv preprint.

  10. Learning Unified System Representations for Microservice Tail Latency Prediction

    Wenzhuo Qian, Hailiang Zhao*, Tianlv Chen, Jiayi Chen, Ziqi Wang, Kingsum Chow, and Shuiguang Deng*. arXiv preprint.

Research portfolio

Selected projects

National Key R&D Program ProjectAdaptive multimodal data-governance technologies for fully connected systems · PI · 2024-2027
NSFC Youth FundService scheduling and resource-management optimization through hardware-software collaboration · PI · 2026-2028
Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science FoundationResource optimization and computing acceleration for generative AI on heterogeneous hardware · Participant · 2025-2027
Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology ProgramDigital management and non-invasive diagnosis technologies for heart failure based on EMAT · Participant · 2025-2026
Kuaishou CollaborationImproving the throughput of representative GPU services in Kuaishou inference scenarios · PI · 2024-2025
Health-AI CollaborationCranial-nerve health assessment based on artificial-intelligence vision algorithms · PI · 2026-2028
ByteDance CollaborationMicroservice performance analysis and resource scheduling for heterogeneous clusters · Participant · 2025-2026
Recognition & service

Awards and academic service

  • Zhejiang Provincial Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Nomination (2026)
  • 2025 SICI Best Paper Award
  • CCF Service Computing Doctoral Dissertation Incentive Program (2025)
  • ZJU Outstanding Young Scholar (2024)
  • Zhejiang University Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation (2024)
  • IEEE ICWS Best Student Paper Award (2019)
More awards and honors
  • Second Prize, Data Elements Empowering New Industrialization Competition Final (2025)
  • Second Prize, CCF Service Computing Innovation Competition (student supervision, 2025)
  • Zhejiang University Boxin Scholarship (2019)
  • Wuhan University of Technology Outstanding Scholarship (2018)

Professional service

Young Editorial Board Member, Computer Engineering & Science; PC member and reviewer for NeurIPS, IJCAI-ECAI, AAAI, PAKDD, and related venues; reviewer for TSC, TMC, FGCS, TKDD, IoTJ, and others.

Resources

Teaching and research materials

Selected lecture notes, explanatory slides, and systems analyses.

Browse research materials