Elizabeth M. Belding

Professor, Department of Computer Science
Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, College of Engineering
University of California
Santa Barbara, California 93106

Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara 2000.

ebelding [at] cs [dot] ucsb [dot] edu

Here is my CV (updated January 2023).

Research Interests:

  • Mobile Wireless Networking​
  • (Fixed and Mobile) Broadband Measurement
  • Online Social Networks​
  • Network Analysis
  • Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD)

Selected UCSB Leadership:

  • Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, College of Engineering (2019 - present)
  • Chair of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (2014 - 2021)
  • Vice Chair of the Computer Science Department (2009 - 2015; 2017 - 2019)
  • Associate Director for the Center for Information Technology and Society (2012 - 2015)

Selected Honors:

Official Bio:

Elizabeth M. Belding is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Prof. Belding's research focuses on mobile and wireless networking, including network performance analysis, and information and communication technologies for development (ICTD).  She is a co-developer of the AODV routing protocol for mobile networks, on which 802.11s and Zigbee technologies are based in part.   The original AODV paper published in WMCSA'99 received the 2018 ACM SIGMOBILE Test of Time Award.  Prof. Belding applies her wireless network expertise to a wide range of contexts, and is particularly interested in measuring, mapping, and improving fixed and mobile Internet accessibility in unserved and underserved communities worldwide.  Her past ICTD projects have included work in Zambia, South Africa, Mongolia, refugee camps and, most recently, Native American communities around the US.  In addition to this work, she is currently very interested in and engaged with efforts to accurately measure and quantify fixed and mobile broadband deployments in the U.S.  She is currently co-leading the Marconi Society's 2030 Digital Equity Working group titled "Ensuring Effective Broadband Assessment, Measurement and Mapping."  She is the founder and director of the Mobility Management and Networking (MOMENT) Laboratory.  Prof. Belding is the author of over 150 technical papers on wireless networking and has served on over 80 conference technical program committees.  She was Vice Chair of the UCSB Computer Science department 2009-15 and 2017-19.  She is currently the inaugural Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the UCSB College of Engineering.  Prof. Belding is an ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow and IEEE Fellow.  She is particularly proud of receiving the UCSB Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2012 and the NCWIT Harrold and Notkin Research and Graduate Mentoring Award in 2015 for her mentorship of graduate students.

Informal, More Interesting Personal Narrative:

Prof. Elizabeth Belding's goal is to connect you with the world, no matter who you are, where you live, and what is happening around you.  As a professor of Computer Science with over 25 years of experience in wireless networking, she applies her technical skills to socially impactful research to improve the safety and well-being of those who are underrepresented.  In particular, she develops innovative communication solutions to improve Internet access in marginalized communities and after natural disasters, she studies Internet use and performance in developing regions, and she is developing better strategies for measuring and mapping fixed and mobile broadband access.  Along the theme of computing for social good, for a few years she collaborated with other researchers on the study of social networks, focusing on hate speech and gender-based violence.  With a motto of “creating opportunity and empowering others to reach their potential,” Prof. Belding enjoys developing research visions and then creating and leading research teams to accomplish them.  A critical component of her work is her passion for student mentorship; she is particularly proud of receiving graduate student mentorship awards from both UCSB and the National Center for Women & Information Technology.  Through her research and service leadership at UCSB, Prof. Belding is committed to empowering and advocating for others and making a positive impact locally and globally.

Publications wordle:

 


 

The Belding Bridge of wireless connectivity.

Recent News

The UCSB Convergence magazine recently had an article about my latest research and funding from NSF and the Rockefeller Foundation on mapping fixed and mobile broadband.

I am leading a panel at the Marconi Society's Decade of Digital Inclusion event on November 2, 2022 titled "Digital Equity: How will we know when we've arrived?"  It promises to be a vibrant discussion on a range of measures of digital equity.  Join us!

HUGE Congratulations to MOMENT Lab members Udit Paul and Jiamo Liu on receiving the Distinguished Paper Award (Best Long Paper) at ACM IMC'22!  Wow!!!  This work is so important and timely given the recent focus on crowdsourced speed test measurements for policy-related decision-making. Our paper argues that using these measurements without understanding their context is problematic. Though the community had internalized that speed-test results can be misleading, no one knew the extent of skews in such crowdsourced datasets. One significant roadblock in contextualizing these measurements...

more

Our group recently had two Internet Measurement Research proposals funded by NSF.  One focuses on improving crowdsourced measurements of fixed broadband in order to better characterize Internet access (and is joint with other UCSB researchers).  The other focuses on statistical techniques for better modeling and mapping of mobile broadband coverage and quality (and is joint with researchers at Georgia Tech).  We are very excited to embark on these important projects.  Thank you so much to NSF for funding this work!

Congratulations to MOMENT Lab members Udit Paul and Jiamo Liu on the acceptance of their paper "The Importance of Contextualization of Crowdsourced Active Speed Test Measurements" to IMC'22!  And Thank You to NSF for sponsoring this research and to Ookla for Good and M-Lab for supporting our work with their datasets!

Congratulations to Dr. Vivek Adarsh on becoming the 20th Ph.D. from the MOMENT Lab!  You are off to great things!

Congratulations to MOMENT Lab members Udit Paul, Jiamo Liu, Vivek Adarsh, and undergraduate researcher David Farias-Llerenas on the publication of their paper in ACM COMPASS 2022!  The paper analyzes M-Lab Speed Test data to better understand download speed disparities based on land and user demographics, and the effect on the digital divide.

I am the TPC Chair of the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) 2022!  It promises to be an exciting conference... submit your papers!

A February 2021 article on cnet.com, titled "Millions of Americans can't get broadband because of a faulty FCC map.  There's a fix", features coverage our some of our recent work.  Thank you to Shara Tibken for her well-written article covering this important problem.

Congratulations to MOMENT Lab members Vivek Adarsh and Udita Paul on the publication of their paper "Too Late for Playback: Estimation of Video Stream Quality in Urban and Rural Contexts" in PAM 2021, and thank you to NSF for sponsoring the research!