I am an incoming tenure-track assistant professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette starting August 2024. My research interests and expertise lie in robotics, cyber-physical systems, control theory, and optimization.
I am actively recruiting M.S. and Ph.D. students starting in Fall 2024/Spring 2025. More details on these fully-funded graduate studentships can be found under the page “Opportunities”.
I earned a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering and an M.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University, where I was fortunate to have esteemed professors, Drs. Henri Gavin (Chair), Jerome Lynch, Earl Dowell, Michael Zavlanos, and Dennis Bernstein, on my dissertation committee. Prior to my time at Duke, I earned an M.Eng. degree (with highest distinction) from Memorial University, Canada and a B.Eng. degree from Tianjin University, China, both in Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering.
By successfully crafting applications and proposals, I have secured over $197,000 in competitive fellowships and grants to fund my doctoral work. I have published my research in numerous first-authored publications in top-ranked, peer-reviewed journals/conferences in the area of control, automation, and optimization (IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, and American Control Conference). Furthermore, I have received two best paper awards (e.g., Senol Utku Annual Award), two best presentation awards (e.g., Southeast Control Conference), and the honor of being named Duke University’s 2022–2023 Graduate/Professional Academic Exemplar of the Year.
During my doctoral training at Duke, I had the privilege of receiving several highly selective and prestigious awards, including Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship, Bass Instructional Teaching Assistant Fellowship, Summer Research Fellowship, Certificate in College Teaching, and U.S. Army Research Office Short-Term Innovative Research Award.
Here is my CV. More details about my teaching experience and recent updates are respectively available under the “Teaching” tab and the “News” tab.
Please feel free to contact me via boyang[dot]zhang[at]duke[dot]edu . I look forward to talking with you soon!