Shanghai Future Network Innovation Laboratory

In 2015, I served as Director of the Shanghai Future Network Innovation Laboratory, established within the Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone. The lab was jointly approved and founded by Shanghai Bell in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Tsinghua University, and Tongji University. Its mission was to conduct collaborative research in cloud computing, big data, and IoT, while accelerating the transfer of cutting-edge research into industrial applications.

Under my leadership, the laboratory was built with a 1,000 m² experimental facility and a server capacity of 1,000 physical machines, equipped with the CloudBand cloud management platform, Nuage networks, and multiple core network virtualization elements. This infrastructure created one of China’s leading environments for future network experimentation and validation, supporting not only frontier research but also providing the telecom and internet industries with a testing and verification platform to speed up technology commercialization.
The laboratory also emphasized talent development and academia–industry integration, organizing 280 student internships and research training opportunities. These programs offered graduate and undergraduate students hands-on experience at the intersection of research and real-world industrial projects, enhancing their interdisciplinary research and engineering skills.
Through this initiative, I facilitated deep collaboration between universities, research institutes, and industry, contributing to the formation of an innovation ecosystem. The laboratory’s foundation also laid important groundwork for subsequent advancements in intelligent networks and artificial intelligence applications