
Gengrui (Edward) Zhang
Assistant Professor
Recent News
I am recruiting Master's and PhD students working on distributed systems, with a focus on the intersection of blockchains, machine learning, cloud computing, and data management. If you're interested, please read this page.
-
[Apr, 25] I will be serving as a PC member at VLDB'26
-
[Feb, 25] Our BFT survey paper is being used by Hyperledger Fabric to introduce Byzantine Fault-Tolerant systems!
-
[Feb, 25] I will be serving as a PC member and publicity chair at DAPPS'25
-
[Feb, 25] I will be serving as a PC member at SYSTOR'25
-
[Jan, 25] Cabinet, dynamically weighted consensus made fast, is accepted by VLDB'25
-
[Nov, 24] I will be serving as a PC member at Middleware'25
-
[Oct, 24] Janus, making CRDTs not so eventual, is accepted by VLDB'25
-
[Aug, 24] I will be serving as a PC member at ICDE'25
-
[Dec, 24] PrestigeBFT, a novel reputation-based BFT consensus algorithm, is accepted by ICDE'24
-
[Oct, 23] Drone, a resource orchestration framework for containerized clouds, is accepted by SoCC'23
Short Bio
​I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Concordia University, where I lead the Research Group of Distributed Computing and Systems (DISCOS).
​
My research focuses on advancing the development of high-performance, highly scalable, and highly available distributed systems to support a wide range of applications in AI systems, blockchain, cloud computing, and data management. The methodology spans the full spectrum from theoretical foundations to practical implementation, including rigorous mathematical modeling, architectural analysis, system design, formal verification, implementation, deployment, and evaluation.
​​
Prior to joining Concordia, I received my PhD from the University of Toronto in 2024, advised by Hans-Arno Jacobsen.​​ My full CV is available here. I have served on the program committees of various international conferences, including ACM SYSTOR, ACM Middleware, IEEE ICDE, and VLDB. I actively collaborate with both academia and industry.​​

DISCOS​
Research Group of Distributed Computing and Systems