About Me
Welcome to my academic homepage. I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Machine Learning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, advised by Prof. Yongxin Chen. Currently, I am also a research intern at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), under the supervision of Dr. Yebin Wang and Dr. Zhaolin Ren. Previously, I received my bachelor's degree in Engineering from the Department of Automation at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2021. You can learn more about my work on this page.
Aside from research, I am a fan of ACGN culture. I also enjoy traveling and swimming.
Research
My research interests span robotics, machine learning, control theory, and stochastic processes. My current research focuses on, but is not limited to, the following topics:
- Risk-aware planning for robots and vehicles. Develop risk-aware mechanisms for large behavior models, and build scalable safety-assured planning methods for robots and vehicles.
- Safe control for dynamical systems. For safety-critical and accuracy-critical dynamical systems, develop uncertainty-aware planning and control methods that can provide formal high-probability safety guarantees.
- Efficiency and real-world effectiveness of control systems. Improve the computational efficiency of learning-based and model-based control methods, and integrate them with hardware-level constraints in real-world settings.
- Advanced control theory for stochastic systems. Use advanced techniques to analyze reachability, stability, and safety of stochastic systems.
- Theoretical analysis of diffusion models. Analyze the distributional properties, reachability, and sample efficiency of diffusion models.
Application Projects
A Fast and Lossless Optimal Power Allocation Scheme for Hybrid Electric Vehicles*
Z. Liu, Y. Wang, Z. Ren, J. Leung and D. Liu.
An Efficient Learning-Based Codesign Pipeline for Motor-Controller Robot Systems. *
Z. Liu and Y.Wang.
* The project was conducted during my research internship at MERL.
Selected Publications
A full list of my publications is available on my Google Scholar profile.
Preprints
Feedback Motion Planning for Stochastic Nonlinear Systems with Signal Temporal Logic Specifications
Z. Liu*, L. Ma*, G. Chou, and Y. Chen, arXiv:2605.02361, 2026.
[PDF]
A New Proof of Sub-Gaussian Norm Concentration Inequality
Z. Liu, S. Power, and Y. Chen, arXiv:2503.14347, 2025.
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Journals
Safety Verification of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems via Probabilistic Tube
Z. Liu, S. Jafarpour, and Y. Chen, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026.
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Probabilistic Reachability of Discrete-Time Nonlinear Stochastic Systems
Z. Liu, S. Jafarpour, and Y. Chen, Automatica, 2026.
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Probabilistic Reachability Analysis of Stochastic Control Systems
Z. Liu*, S. Jafarpour*, and Y. Chen, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2025.
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Safety Verification of Stochastic Systems under Signal Temporal Logic Specifications
L. Ma, Z. Liu, H. Yu, and Y. Chen, IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2025.
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Conferences
Model Predictive Control with High-Probability Safety Guarantee for Nonlinear Stochastic Systems
Z. Liu, L. Ma, and Y. Chen, 2026 American Control Conference, 2026.
[PDF]
Trajectory Optimization of Stochastic Systems under Chance Constraints via Set Erosion
Z. Liu*, L. Ma*, and Y. Chen, 2025 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2025.
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Safety Verification of Stochastic Systems: A Set-Erosion Approach
Z. Liu, S. Jafarpour, and Y. Chen, 2025 American Control Conference, 2025.
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* These authors shares equal contributions.
News
- 2026.07 I gave a talk titled "Safety Verification and Control for Nonlinear Stochastic Systems" at MIT. Many thanks to Eric Yu and Prof. Chuchu Fan for hosting the seminar.
- 2026.05 I started a new research internship at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). Sincerest appreciation to my excellent supervisors.
- 2026.03 I gave a talk titled "Fluctuation and Safety of Stochastic Control Systems" at Harvard University. Many thanks to Yang Hu and Prof. Na Li for hosting the seminar.
- 2025.12 Prof. Yongxin Chen and I gave a talk titled "Safety Assurance of Stochastic Systems" at CDC 2025.
- 2025.07 Our paper "Safety Verification of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems via Probabilistic Tube" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Many thanks to my collaborators for their efforts and contributions.
- 2025.07 Prof. Yongxin Chen and I gave a talk titled "Safety Assurance of Stochastic Systems" at ACC 2025.
- 2025.04 Our paper "Probabilistic Reachability Analysis of Stochastic Control Systems" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Many thanks to my collaborators for their efforts and contributions.
Contact
Email: zliu910 [at] gatech [dot] edu