portrait
Zhichao Cao Ph.D
Office: Room 3224, Engineering Building, 428 S. Shaw Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824
Email: caozc at msu dot edu

Biography

I am an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University (MSU). I am also a faculty affiliate of AgBioResearch at MSU. I received my Ph.D. degree at 2013 in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Scienc and Technology (HKUST). I received my B.E. degree at 2009 in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. My research interests lie broadly in Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) systems, physics-informed model for wireless systems, and smart-X (agriculture/health/city/transportation) applications.

Recent News

  • [Wireless Networking] Our paper "DeRa: Deep-Range Low-Power Wide Area IoT via Ultra-sensitive Signal Detection" is accepted by ACM MobiCom 2026. Congratulations to Jialuo!
  • [Wireless Networking] Our paper "Kairos: Soil-Aware Transmission Control For Long-Term Agricultural Cross-Soil LoRa" is accepted by IEEE ICNP 2026. Congratulations to Jingkai!
  • [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of ACM MobiCom'27.
  • [Service] Invited to be a track co-chair of MSN'26.
  • [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of ACM SenSys'27.
  • [Edge ML] Our paper "3D-FAD: Informativeness-guided Multimodal 3D Object Detection for Federated Autonomous Driving" is accepted by ACM/IEEE TOSN. Congratulations to Maolin!
  • [Group] Maolin has successful obtained her Ph.D. degree and will join TikTok. Congratulations to Maolin.
  • [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of IEEE MASS'26, IEEE MILCOM'26 and IEEE INFOCOM'27.
  • [MindCare] Our vision paper "AIoT-based Continuous, Contextualized, and Explainable Driving Assessment for Older Adults" is available on Arxiv. Thank Yimeng for his tremendous efforts!
  • [Edge ML] Our paper "GeoFL: A Framework for Efficient Geo-Distributed Cross-Device Federated Learning" is accepted by ACM/IEEE TON. Congratulations to Maolin!
  • [MindCare] Our MindCare project has been highlighted in the report of MSU Tetrad Symposium. Go Green!
  • [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of IEEE ICDCS 2026.
  • [Group] Gen has successful obtained his Ph.D. degree and will join Google. Congratulations to Gen.

Edge Intelligence and Networking (EIN) Group [Group Members]

Our EIN research group focus on broad networking optimization and computational intelligence topics we have met during developing and implementing various edge and IoT systems that can enhance MSU's strength. The research of EIN group is mainly support by NSF and MSU internal resources.
Research Projects:
  • MindCare: Long-term sensing and monitoring AIoT system for mental health assessment. (2024 - Present)
  • FarmEye: A large-scale agriclture data collection system with LoRa. (2021 - Present)
NSF Grants:
  • CAREER: LoRa Enabled Space-air-ground Integrated Networks for Next-Generation Agricultural IoT. 2024 - 2029. [Project Website]
  • Collaborative Research: NeTS: Medium: Towards High-Performing LoRa with Embedded Intelligence on the Edge (Leading PI). 2023 - 2027. [Project Website]
  • CNS Core: Small: Collaborative: Coalescent Computing - New Theory, Mechanism and Platform for Adaptive Edge Computing (PI). 2020 - 2022.
MSU Internal Grants:
  • MDARD: A Holistic Approach to Increasing Climate Resilience of Tree Fruit Production (Co-PI). 2024 - 2027.
  • Tetrad: Risk Modeling for Older Drivers: Applying Edge AI and IoT in Cognition-aware, Continuous Driving Skill Analysis (Leading PI). 2024 - 2025.

Selected Recent Publications (Years 26)

Peer Review:
  • Jialuo Du, Jingkai Lin, and Zhichao Cao.
    DeRa: Deep-Range Low-Power Wide Area IoT via Ultra-sensitive Signal Detection. MobiCom 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Jingkai Lin, Yidong Ren, Jialuo Du, Yimeng Liu, Yawen Wang, Younsuk Dong, Tianxing Li, and Zhichao Cao.
    Kairos: Soil-Aware Transmission Control For Long-Term Agricultural Cross-Soil LoRa. ICNP 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Fangwei Zhang, Yimeng Liu, Franklin Wu, Yi Ding, Zhichao Cao, and Ruofeng Liu.
    UltraLEGO: A Modular Ultra-Wideband Phased Array Platform for Wireless Sensing and Localization. MobiCom 2026.
    [Appear Soon]
  • Juexing Wang, Binbin Xie, Minhao Cui, Yimeng Liu, Xiao Zhang, Ruofeng Liu, Huacheng Zeng, Zhichao Cao, Jie Xiong, and Tianxing Li.
    MetaTap: Resonance-Splitting-Based Multi-Dip Encoding for High-ResolutionWater Contaminant Sensing. ACM IMWUT 10(2):1-27, 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Maolin Gan, Li Liu, Samiul Alam, Jiancheng Liu, Mi Zhang, Hucheng Zeng, and Zhichao Cao.
    3D-FAD: Informativeness-guided Multimodal 3D Object Detection for Federated Autonomous Driving. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Juexing Wang, Binbin Xie, Yimeng Liu, Minhao Cui, Xiao Zhang, Guangjing Wang, Ke Sun, Zhichao Cao, Huacheng Zeng, Qingxu Jin, Younsuk Dong, Hui Li, Jie Xiong, and Tianxing Li.
    SoilNutri: A Passive Metasurface-based, Low-cost System for Soil Moisture and Nitrogen Monitoring. ACM IMWUT 10(1):1-28, 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Maolin Gan, Lanpeng Li, Samiul Alam, Li Liu, Luyang Liu, Mi Zhang, Hucheng Zeng, and Zhichao Cao.
    GeoFL: A Framework for Efficient Geo-Distributed Cross-Device Federated Learning. ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking, 2026.
    [PDF]
Pre-Print:
  • Yimeng Liu, Fangwei Zhang, Maolin Gan, Jialuo Du, Jingkai Lin, Yawen Wang, Fei Sun, Honglei Chen, Linda Hill, Ruofeng Liu, Tianxing Li, and Zhichao Cao.
    AIoT-based Continuous, Contextualized, and Explainable Driving Assessment for Older Adults. arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.00691, 2026.
    [PDF]
  • Yimeng Liu, Maolin Gan, Yidong Ren, Gen Li, Jingkai Lin, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
    Hydra-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Modal Leaf Wetness Sensing. arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22685, 2025.
    [PDF]
  • Yidong Ren, Maolin Gan, Chenning Li, Shakhrul Iman Siam, Mi Zhang, Shigang Chen, and Zhichao Cao.
    Morph: ChirpTransformer-based Encoder-decoder Co-design for Reliable LoRa Communication. arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22851, 2025.
    [PDF]
  • Maolin Gan*, Khang Nguyen*, Jialuo Du, Yidong Ren, and Zhichao Cao.
    NELoRa++: Towards General Neural-enhanced LoRa Demodulation. MSU EIN Group Technical Report, 2025.
    [PDF]

Teaching

  • Fall 2020, 2025/Spring 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-220, Programming in C
  • Spring 2024, 2025, 2026, CSE-410, Operating System
  • Spring 2020/Fall 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-891, AIoT: Artificial Intelligence in the Edge

Quote

"Nothing endures but change."

- Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (540 BC - 480 BC)