I am an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnique Montreal (engineering school of University of Montreal) starting in September 2023. Before joining Polytechnique Montreal, I was a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University and a research fellow at the Simons Institute at University of California, Berkeley. I received my PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University with specialization in systems and control advised by Peter E. Caines.

My research aims to discover fundamental properties of dynamics and control of systems that involve large populations of network-coupled decision makers, and achieve intelligent decision-making for such systems.

Broadly, my research interests include control, game and learning theories for large networks, and their applications in social networks, epidemic networks, smart renewable energy grids and neuronal networks.

To Prospective Students

• I am looking for highly motivated students with strong mathematical and/or coding background to work on modelling, control, optimization or learning of large networks of dynamical systems with uncertainties. If you are interested in working with me, please write to me with your CV, transcripts and research interests. My apologies for not being able to reply to all your inquiries.

• PhD and master students: We have openings for Winter/Fall 2025.

Also, feel free to reach out to me if you are interested in working with me via any of these following scholarship opportunities:
• Postdocs: Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mitacs Elevate, FRQNT Scholarship, IVADO Postdoc Scholarship
• Undergraduate students (Summer 2024): Mitacs Globalink Research Internships, NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA)
• International students: Merit Scholarship Program for Foreign Students (PBEEE), China Scholarship Council

Recent News

• 03/2024: Our NetSci2024 symposium on "Controlling Complex Networks: When Control Theory Meets Network Science", co-organized by Prof. Yang-Yu Liu (Harvard), Prof. Aming Li (Peking) and myself, will be held on June 18, 2024 in Quebec City, Canada.
• 12/2023: I gave a talk on LQG Graphon Mean Field Games at the Simons Institue at UC Berkeley.
• 06/2023: I will join the Electrical Engineering Department at Polytechnique Montréal as an assistant professor in September 2023.
• 05/2023: Our journal paper on LQG Graphon Mean Field Games has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
• 01/2023: I gave an invited talk (remotely) in the Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics in the College of Engineering at Peking University .
• 12/2022: I gave two talks at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) in Cancún: one on fixed-point centrality and the other on graphon mean field games. Slides are available here: [Talk1] [Talk2].
• 11/2022: Two talks on Transmission Neural Networks: one talk in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research at UC Berkeley, and one talk at the 8th Annual Industry Day at the Simons Institute, UC Berkeley.
• 10/2022: I gave a talk on Transmission Neural Networks at the Workshop on Epidemics and Information Diffusion at the Simons Institute, UC Berkeley [Video] [Slides].
• 08/2022: Check out our work on Transmission Neural Networks: From Virus Spread Models to Neural Networks. A short presentation on this topic at the Simons Institute is now available online [Video].
• 07/2022: Two papers are accepted by CDC 2022: one on fixed-point centrality and the other on infinite horizon LQG graphon mean field games. See [W1] [W2].
• 02/2022: I received the Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship.
• 10/2021: Recordings of our Workshop on Mean Field Games on Networks are now available online: [MFGNetRecording].
• 10/2021: Our work on Optimal control of network-coupled subsystems is about to appear in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.
• 07/2021: Two papers, one on LQG graphon mean field games and the other on opinion dynamics modeling, are accepted by CDC 2021. See [W1] [W2].
• 02/2021: Our journal paper on Subspace decompositions for graphon LQR is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.
• 02/2021: Check out the YouTube Channel for our Virtual Informal Systems Seminar!
• 09/2020: Our journal paper on Linear Quadratic Graphon Field Games is about to appear in Communications in Information and Systems.
• 11/2019: Our journal paper on Graphon Control of Large-Scale Networks of Linear Systems is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
• 07/2019: Three papers on network control, graphon control, and spectral representations of graphon dynamical systems are accepted by CDC 2019. See [W1] [W2] [W3].
• 05/2018: I received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at McGill University.

Contact Information

shuang [dot] gao [at] polymtl [dot] ca
+1 (514) 340-4711 ext. 7135
M-6023, Lassonde Pavilion, 2700 Chemin de la Tour, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3T 1J4
Campus Map Homepage at Polytechnique Montreal