Rate My Professor Boyang Li

Dr. Boyang Li is a Lecturer in Aerospace Systems Engineering at the School of Engineering, University of Newcastle, within the College of Engineering, Science and Environment. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in China. His research specializations focus on nonconventional uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) configurations, including vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) systems; flight dynamics integration and advanced control, such as model predictive control (MPC) and learning-based control; aerial robotic path and trajectory optimization; and empirical advancements through field experiments in aerial and underwater robotic systems. His fields of research include aircraft performance and flight control systems (40%), field robotics (40%), and flight dynamics (20%).

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Li served as Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University from July 2020 to January 2023, where he founded the Autonomous Aerial Systems Laboratory (AASL). He previously held positions as Research Associate in Robotics for Extreme Environments at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering (July 2019–June 2020) and Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's Air Traffic Management Research Institute (January–June 2019). At the University of Newcastle, he serves as Course Coordinator and Lecturer for AERO3000: Flight Dynamics and Tutor for AERO2000: Aircraft Performance and Operations. His publication record includes journal articles such as "Robust Reinforcement Learning Control Framework for a Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Using Critic Neural Network" (2025), "Multi-Layer Path Planning for Complete Structural Inspection Using UAV" (2025), "Experimental Nonrobocentric Dynamic Landing of Quadrotor UAVs With On-Ground Sensor Suite" (2024), and conference papers like "Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Aircraft Inspection using UAVs" (2025) and "The Moving Shocks in the Ethylene Transverse Jets in Supersonic Crossflow" (2026). Highly cited works include "A camera-based target detection and positioning UAV system for search and rescue (SAR) purposes" (2016, 292 citations) and "Transition optimization for a VTOL tail-sitter UAV" (2020, 94 citations).