Zhexian* Li

Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow

prof_pic.png

zhexian[at]umich[dot]edu

I am a Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, working with Necmiye Ozay and Dimitra Panagou. Prior to that, I received a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering and an M.S. degree in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, working with Ketan Savla, and received a B.Eng. degree in transportation engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing, China.

I work at the intersection of theoretical domains in control, optimization, and learning, and application domains in civil infrastructure and mobility systems. My research develops algorithms and tools for smart operations of infrastructure and mobility systems with provable guarantees in performance and resilience.

In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family and cycling around mountains and forests.

news

Apr 08, 2026 Informal seminar talk at the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Mar 23, 2026 Invited talk at the Department of Decision and Control, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Jan 29, 2026 Invited talk at the School of Science and Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
Dec 22, 2025 Our paper “Output-feedback adaptive model predictive control for ramp metering: a set-membership approach” was provisionally accepted by Automatica.
Nov 03, 2025 Our paper “A complex spatial frequency approach to optimal control of finite-extent linear evolution systems” was conditionally accepted by IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

selected publications

  1. HMT
    cmame.jpg
    Constrained bilinear optimal control of reactive evolution equations
    Zhexian Li, Felipe P. J. Barros, and Ketan Savla
    International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2027
    DOI
  2. CDC
    FNO.png
    FNO^∠θ: Extended Fourier neural operator for learning state and optimal control of distributed parameter systems
    Zhexian Li and Ketan Savla
    In 2026 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2026
    arXiv
  3. TAC
    tac.jpg
    A complex spatial frequency approach to optimal control of finite-extent linear evolution systems
    Zhexian Li, Athanassios S. Fokas, and Ketan Savla
    IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026
    DOI
  4. Automatica
    auto.jpg
    Output-feedback adaptive model predictive control for ramp metering: a set-membership approach
    Zhexian Li and Ketan Savla
    Automatica, 2026
    DOI