Zhaodan Kong is is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and was a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University before joining UC Davis in 2015. His research focuses on collaborative assured autonomy, integrating principles from control theory, artificial intelligence, formal methods, and cognitive science to enhance safety, trust and transparency in emerging aviation systems.
Relevant expertise:
- Assured autonomy for advanced aviation: developing scalable autonomy frameworks for next-generation air mobility systems, integrating learning-enable components with formal assurance and adaptive control for safe, certifiable operations in dynamic airspace.
- Assured and cognitive-aware human–autonomy collaboration: modeling and enhancing human trust, workload, and situational awareness to enable verifiable, interpretable, and adaptive collaboration between humans and autonomous agents in complex flight operations.