Assistant Professor
Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
1103D Bevill
(205) 348-2807
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B.E., Automation, Beihang University, 2009
M.E., Mechanical Engineering, Beihang University, 2012
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, 2018
Dr. Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Alabama (UA). He directs the Autonomous Systems and Control Lab (ASCL) at UA. Prior to joining UA, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include control and autonomous systems, and their applications to aerospace, robotics and wind energy systems. A current focus of his research group is to design and validate control and decision-making algorithms for autonomous systems to ensure their safe and efficient operation in challenging scenarios under various uncertainties. Besides theoretical development, Dr. Zhao is very interested in implementing and testing his developed algorithms on unmanned vehicles in the real world.