Zhizhen Zhong Email & Phone Number

Zhizhen Zhong is a Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer at Netpreme based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, North America. I am the Founder and CEO of Netpreme. Netpreme pioneers next-generation computer systems that combines the best of photonics and electronics for AI and beyond. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, where I work on building unconventional photonic-electronic integrated systems to accelerate data-intensive workloads. I have a Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from Tsinghua University, where I also obtained a B.Eng. in Electronics Engineering and a B.Eco. in Economics. A major focus of my postdoctoral study at MIT is to design and build "Lightning" at the crossroads of modern data networking and computing - Lightning is the first photonic-electronic smartNIC for fast and energy-efficient inference. I collaborate with researchers from MIT CSAIL and RLE to prototype Lightning on Xilinx RFSoC FPGA with GHz photonic devices and circuits. I am motivated by the challenge and potential of photonic-electronic systems, and I aim to contribute to the advancement of this emerging field. I co-created and co-instructed a new course at MIT on "optical computing in the era of AI" to bring cutting-edge knowledge in this domain to students.