Ningshi Yao

Mason ECE assistant professor Ningshi Yao
Titles and Organizations

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-5599
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Nguyen Engineering Building
Room 3241
Mail Stop: 1G5
Email: nyao4@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

Biography

Ningshi Yao is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University. She received her PhD from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2020, and her BS in Automatic Control from Zhejiang University, China, in 2014. Prior to joining Mason, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology from November 2020 to July 2021.

In her research, she developed a novel contention-resolving model predictive control method to co-design scheduling and control for resource-constrained systems, such as networked control systems, traffic intersection management, and human-robot collaborative systems. Her research interests include real-time scheduling, control theory, cyber-physical systems, machine learning, and human-robot interaction.

Degrees

  • PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Engineering
  • MS, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Engineering
  • BS, Automatic Control, Zhejiang University

Research Interests

  • Human-robot interactions
  • Human-robot co-learning
  • Bio-inspired robotics
  • Distributed resource allocation

Publications

Google Scholar 

Research Spotlight

Ningshi Yao's work centers around control systems and human-robot interaction. She studies how robotic devices detect and adapt to human interaction. At Mason, she works with faculty and students to create lighter-than-air autonomous balloons – "blimps" – that respond quickly and efficiently to various situations. Learn more about how these blimps work in the video below.