Ming Cao

Ming Cao is a Full Professor at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), holding positions in the Department of Discrete Technology and Production Automation, the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen, and serving as Chair of the Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI. His academic roles include Director of the Jantina Tammes School and membership in prestigious organizations such as the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and the European Commission’s DG CNECT. Cao’s research focuses on multi-agent systems, autonomous robotics, complex networks, and cooperative control, with applications in robotics, epidemic modeling, and biomimetic sensors.

Education: PostDoc in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University (2008), PhD in Electrical Engineering from Yale University (2007).

Research Interests: Multi-agent systems, distributed decision-making, cooperative control, robotic teams, seal whisker-inspired flow sensing, and privacy-preserving control systems.

Recent Trends in Articles: Recent work emphasizes co-evolutionary dynamics in social-technical systems, privacy in control systems, and biomimetic robotics. Key topics include feedback mechanisms in cooperation, hypergraph-based epidemic models, and seal whisker mechanics for underwater sensing.

• Awards: European Control Award (2016), Manfred Thoma Medal (2017), ERC Grant (2012).
• Grants: Vidi Grant from NWO (2015) for agent coordination research.

Labs/Teams: Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control, Research Center for Data Science and Systems Complexity (DSSC). Active in editorial roles for journals like Artificial Life and Robotics and the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization.