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Dr. Xiaotian (Steven) Dai

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Lecturer (~Assistant Professor)
Real-Time and Distributed Systems Research Group
Department of Computer Science
University of York, UK

Office: CSE/136
Email: xiaotian.dai (at) york.ac.uk

About

I am a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, UK, where I lead the Real-Time and Flexible Cyber-Physical Systems (ReFLEX) Lab. My research focuses on the scheduling and verification of real-time cyber-physical systems, with a particular emphasis on timing analysis and on improving scheduling flexibility and adaptability in safety-critical applications. These applications include robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other cyber-physical systems that must meet strict timing constraints.

My work has contributed to innovative modeling, scheduling, and analysis techniques; digital twins for runtime improvement; and specialized hardware designs for safety-critical embedded systems. Many of these advancements have been adopted by industry. I am also actively involved in the robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) community, concentrating on ensuring operational safety, robustness, and resilience.

You can find more about my research interests and projects in the research page. If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in real-time systems or cyber-physical systems, you can find more information on PhD opportunities.

Short Bio:

From 2019 to 2023, I worked as a Research Associate on the MOCHA research project (funded by Huawei), under the supervision of Prof. Iain Bate and Prof. Alan Burns in the Real-Time and Distributed Systems Research Group (RTDS). The MOCHA project targets complex many-core architectures with demanding performance and timing requirements, leveraging digital twins and cache-aware scheduling to develop key techniques for next-generation 5G/6G communication base stations.

Prior to MOCHA, I contributed to the EU H2020 DEIS project in 2019, collaborating with Prof. Tim Kelly and Prof. Ibrahim Habli. DEIS focused on model-based safety assurance—using the Structured Assurance Case Metamodel (SACM) (now an OMG standard)—and developed corresponding tools for model-based autonomous and cyber-physical systems in partnership with AVL, Siemens, General Motors, and Fraunhofer.

I first joined the Real-Time Systems Group at York in 2015 as a PhD student under Prof. Alan Burns, earning my PhD in 2019 with a Best Thesis award. Before that, I completed an MSc (with distinction) in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield in 2014, following a BSc in Automatic Control in 2011. To date, I have published over 30 papers and regularly serve as a TPC member and reviewer for prominent conferences and journals in real-time systems, embedded systems, robotics, and design automation.

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