Biography

Yiqi (Nick) Zhao is a PhD Student for Computer Science at the University of Southern California. He works with Professor Jyo Deshmukh and Professor Lars Lindemann. His research interests include design, verification, and testing of learning-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) with formal methods and control theoretic approaches. Before this, he was a student at Vanderbilt University, who majored in Computer Science and Mathematics (Applied Track) and minored in Electrical Engineering and Data Science. At Vanderbilt, he worked with Professor Meiyi Ma on smart city and specification-enhanced machine learning.

Interests
  • Formal Methods
  • Cyber-Physical Systems
  • Systems and Control Theory
  • Mathematical Optimization
Education
  • PhD, Computer Science, 2023 - Now

    University of Southern California

  • BSc, magna cum laude, Honors in Computer Science, 2020-2023

    Vanderbilt University

Work Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Vanderbilt University
Grader of CS 4260 (Artificial Intelligence)
Vanderbilt University
August 2022 – May 2023 Nashville
I graded students’ homework and hold office hours on a regular basis to answer students’ questions.
 
 
 
 
 
ADP
Application Development Intern
ADP
June 2022 – August 2022 Roseland
I worked as an Application Development Intern within the Global Product & Tech (GPT) group at ADP. I developed an API for Notification Replay for the Autopay group using Spring Boot and MongoDB, etc.

Academic Services

Reviewer for Computing, HSCC 2024 (Repeatability Evaluation), ACC 2024, VMCAI 2024, CDC 2024, ICLR 2025, AISTATS 2025, HSCC 2025, HSCC 2025 (Repeatability Evaluation)

Awards

ICCPS Best Paper Award Finalist
Viterbi School of Engineering Fellowship
VISE Award (Scholarship for the VISE Summer Fellowship)
See certificate

Contact

Please send me an email for any questions or research opportunities.