Shuo Yang

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab, advised by Professor George J. Pappas. I obtained my Bachelor's degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2021 where I worked closely with Professor Xiang Yin. I have also spent time in Toyota Research, Tencent AI and Point72 (Cubist Systematic Strategies). I was born in Nov 2000 and grew up in Hunan.

My research focuses on ensuring the safety of AI-enabled robots, allowing them to complete complex tasks while while remaining robust to real-world uncertainty. My research draws on tools from formal methods, statistics, and game theory. I am particularly interested in the following areas:

• Safe, adaptive and efficient learning-based control in (mainly non-cooperative) multi-agent systems
• Efficient policy learning (e.g. diffusion policy) for robotics control
• Uncertainty-aware safe control for learning-enabled systems (e.g. using conformal prediction)
• Formal verification and synthesis for learning-enabled systems

I am expected to graduate in December 2025. Please feel free to reach out if you believe I would be a good fit for your institution.

Email  /  Linkedin /  Github  /  Google Scholar  /  GRASP Page

(* indicates equal contribution, see full list on Google Scholar)

Dynamic Rank Adjustment in Diffusion Policies for Efficient and Flexible Training
Xiatao Sun, Shuo Yang, Yinxing Chen, Francis Fan, Yiyan (Edgar) Liang, Daniel Rakita
Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2025 [webpage][arxiv][code]

Key words: Online Imitation Learning, Diffusion Model

STLGame: Signal Temporal Logic Games in Adversarial Multi-Agent Systems
Shuo Yang, Hongrui Zheng, Cristian-Ioan Vasile, George J. Pappas, Rahul Mangharam
Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC) 2025 [webpage][arxiv][code]

Key words: Multi-Agent Systems, Game Theory, Formal Methods

MEGA-DAgger: Imitation Learning with Multiple Imperfect Experts
Xiatao Sun*, Shuo Yang*, Mingyan Zhou, Kunpeng Liu, Rahul Mangharam
IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC) 2024 [arxiv][code]

Key words: Imitation Learning, Autonomous Racing, Safety

Learning Adaptive Safety for Multi-Agent Systems
Luigi Berducci, Shuo Yang, Rahul Mangharam, Radu Grosu
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024 [arxiv][code]

Key words: Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Agent Systems, Safety

Safe Perception-based Control under Stochastic Sensor Uncertainty using Conformal Prediction
Shuo Yang, George J. Pappas, Rahul Mangharam, Lars Lindemann
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2023 [arxiv]

Key words: Safety, Uncertainty Quantification, Perception

Secure Your Intention: On Notions of Pre-Opacity in Discrete-Event Systems
Shuo Yang, Xiang Yin
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC) 2022 [arxiv]

Key words: Information Privacy, Automata Theory

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Research Assistant. Jan 2022 to present
Advisor: George J. Pappas

Cubist Systematic Strategies (Point72), New York, NY, USA
Quantitative Researcher Intern. May 2025 to Aug 2025

Tencent AI, Shenzhen, China
Research Scientist Intern. Jun 2024 to Aug 2024
Mentor: Haobo Fu

Toyota Research Institute of North America, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Research Scientist Intern. May 2023 to Aug 2023
Mentors: Georgios Fainekos and Bardh Hoxha

Duke University, remote
Research Assistant. Jun 2020 to Sep 2020
Mentor: Michael Zavlanos

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Research Assistant. Mar 2019 to Jun 2021
Advisor: Xiang Yin

• 2024, L-CSS Outstanding Reviewer Award (top 1%) [Letter]
• 2024, DAAD AInet Fellow (Safe and Secure AI)
• 2023, ACC Travel Grant
• 2021, The Dean's Fellowship from Penn
• 2021, Solomon M. Swaab Fellowship from Penn
• 2021, Outstanding Graduate of SJTU
• 2021, Outstanding Bachelor Thesis Award from SJTU (top 1%)
• 2020, Person of the Year of SJTU [SJTU News Spotlight]
• 2018 & 2019, Outstanding Academic Scholarship from SJTU

• Co-organizer: the 2nd Workshop on MAD-Games: Multi-Agent Dynamic Games @ ICRA 2024
• Area Chair: Tiny Papers @ ICLR 2024, 2023
• I also serve as a CPHS'2024 mentor.
• Reviewer:
  • American Control Conference (ACC)
  • IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
  • International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS)
  • Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
  • IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC)
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
  • IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles (TIV)
  • Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems (NAHS)
  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
  • IROS 2023 Workshop on Multi-agent Dynamic Games (MAD-Games)
  • NeurIPS 2023 AI for Science Workshop (AI4Science)
  • etc.

Template from Jon Barron.
Last updated April 2025.