Pengfei Zhou

Assistant Professor

Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information
University of Pittsburgh

Office: 135 N Bellefield Ave, RM 710, IS Building, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Email: pengfeizhou@pitt.edu

 

Hiring: I'm looking for motivated PhD students and research assistants. If you are interested in building mobile systems, feel free to contact me preferably with your CV. Check out Pitt Graduate Admissions FAQs before you apply for the program.

Biography

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. I lead the Mobile Intelligence and Networking Technology (MINT) research group. Prior to joining Pitt, I was a Research Scientist at ADSC, a Research Fellow at Alibaba-NTU Joint Research Institute (JRI) and a Technical Advisor for Alibaba Group. I founded fayfans Co., Ltd developing AIoT products in 2016. I received the B.E. degree in the Department of Automation from Tsinghua University, and the Ph.D. degree in the School of Computer Science and Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, under the guidance of a great advisor Prof. Mo Li.

Research Interests

Mobile and Networked Sensing, Mobile Intelligence for Healthcare, and Mobile Networks.

Teaching

APPLICATIONS OF NETWORKS: Spring 2023.
ALGORITHM DESIGN: Fall 2024, Fall 2023.
DOCTORAL SEMINAR: Spring 2024.

Selected Publications (Full list)

[SenSys'24] "Advancing PPG-Based Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring from a Generative Perspective", in ACM SenSys, Hangzhou, China, November 4-7, 2024. (PDF).
Hui Ji, Pengfei Zhou.

[MobiSys'24] "Invisible Optical Adversarial Stripes on Traffic Sign against Autonomous Vehicles", in ACM MobiSys, Tokyo, Japan, June 3-7, 2024. (PDF).
Dongfang Guo, Yuting Wu, Yimin Dai, Pengfei Zhou, Xin Lou, Rui Tan.

[MobiCom'23] "Practically Adopting Human Activity Recognition", in ACM MobiCom, Madrid, Spain, October 2-6, 2023. (PDF), (Code), (Video).
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan and Mo Li.

[SmartGridComm'22] "Detecting Cyber Attacks in Smart Grids with Massive Unlabeled Sensing Data", in IEEE SmartGridComm, Singapore, October 25-28, 2022. (PDF), (Code).
Hanyu Zeng, Zhen Wei Ng, Pengfei Zhou, Xin Lou, David K.Y. Yau, Marianne Winslett.

[MobiCom'22] "Experience: Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection in On-demand Food Delivery Business", in ACM MobiCom, Sydney, Australia, October 17-21, 2022. (PDF), (Code).
Pengfei Zhou, Yi Ding, Yang Li, Mo Li, Guobin Shen, Tian He.
This paper presents the experience of business adoption of IODetector (SenSys'12).

[SenSys'21] "LIMU-BERT: Unleashing the Potential of Unlabeled Data for IMU Sensing Applications", in ACM SenSys, Coimbra, Portugal, November 15-17, 2021. (PDF), (Code), (Video). Best Paper Award Runner-up.
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan, Mo Li, Guobin Shen.
Invited to publish in ACM GetMobile as a research highlight, check it out here.

[IMWUT/Ubicomp'19] "Amateur: Augmented Reality based Vehicle Navigation System", in ACM IMWUT, Vol.2, No.4, Article 155, London, UK, December 2019. (PDF), (Slides).
Chu Cao, Zhenjiang Li, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li.

[INFOCOM'17] "Large-Scale Invisible Attack on AFC Systems with NFC-Equipped Smartphones", in IEEE INFOCOM, Atlanta, USA, May 2017. (PDF).
Fan Dang, Pengfei Zhou, Zhenhua Li, Ennan Zhai, Aziz Mohaisen, Qingfu Wen, Mo Li.

[MobiCom'16] "DopEnc: Acoustic-based Encounter Profiling using Smartphones", in ACM MobiCom, New York, USA, October 2016. (PDF).
Huanle Zhang, Wan Du, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li, Prasant Mopahatra.

[MobiCom'14] "Use It Free: Instantly Knowing Your Phone Attitude", in ACM MobiCom, Maui, Hawaii, USA, September 2014. (PDF), (Video).
Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li, and Guobin Shen.

[SenSys'12] "IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection", in ACM SenSys, Toronto, Canada, November 2012. (PDF), (Code). Test of Time Award.
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, Zhenjiang Li, Mo Li, and Guobin (Jacky) Shen.

[MobiSys'12] "How Long to Wait?: Predicting Bus Arrival Time with Mobile Phone based Participatory Sensing", in ACM MobiSys, Pages 379-392, Low Wood Bay, United Kingdom, June 2012. (PDF), (Video).
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, and Mo Li.

Professional Services

Conference Organization
  • Registration Chair, HotMobile 2025: The International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications
  • TPC Track co-Chair, ICPADS 2024: The International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (Interdisciplinary Distributed Systems and Applications track)
  • PhD Forum co-Chair, IPSN 2023: The ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks
  • Demo and Poster co-Chair, ICDCS 2023: The IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems

  • TPC Member
  • MobiSys 2025: The ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
  • SenSys 2024, 2025: The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
  • SmartGridComm 2024: The IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids
  • ICDCS 2024: The IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems
  • IoTDI 2023, 2024: The ACM/IEEE Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation
  • TheWebConf 2023 (WWW 2023): The ACM Web Conference (Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile Web, and Web of Things Track)

  • Group Members

  • Bo Wu (PhD student, 2023-)
  • Hui Ji (PhD student, 2023-)
  • Hanyu Zeng (PhD student, 2024-)

  • Alumni

  • Xiaotian (Jason) Dou (co-supervised PhD student, now Postdoc Research Fellow at Harvard University)

  • Honors and Awards

  • Test of Time Award, ACM SenSys, Boston, 2022.
  • GetMobile Research Highlight, ACM GetMobile Magazine, 2022.
  • Best Paper Award Runner-up, ACM SenSys, Coimbra, 2021.
  • Silver medal, first innovation and entrepreneurship competition for Tsinghua alumni, Beijing, 2016.
  • Best Demo Award, Demo video, IEEE SECON, Singapore, 2014.
  • Outstanding Press Operation Volunteer for Beijing Olympics, Water Cube, Beijing, 2008.
  • Vice President, Department Student Association, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2008.

  • Talks

  • "Beyond Resolution PPG Sensing for Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring", University of Pittsburgh, USA, October 2024.
  • "Practical Mobile Sensing at Scale", University of Pittsburgh, DINS Speaker Series & Telecom Seminar, USA, March 2024.
  • "Practical Mobile Sensing at Scale", Pittsburgh, USA, October 2023.
  • "IODetector - From Research to Practice", SenSys Test of Time Award talk, Boston, USA, November 2022.
  • "Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection for On-demand Food Delivery Business", MobiCom, Sydney, Australia, October 2022.
  • "Mobile Crowdsensing", Online, School of Computing and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, May 2022.
  • "Unleashing the Potential of Unlabeled Data for IMU Sensing Applications", Global Innovation Exchange, Tsinghua University, China, November 2021.
  • "Intelligent Mobile Sensing: From Research to Practice", School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore, July 2021.
  • "Mobile Sensing and Applications: Industry Opportunities", School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2017.

  • Useful Links

    Doctoral Degrees in Pitt SCI and the Requirements
    Pitt Graduate Admissions FAQ