Steven Dai
Portrait of Xiaotian (Steven) Dai
University of York · ReFLEX Lab

Xiaotian (Steven) Dai

Real-Time and Distributed Systems Group | University of York

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) · PI of ReFLEX Lab
Real-Time & Distributed Systems Group · Department of Computer Science

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

View research Publications

About Me

I am a Lecturer (~Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, where I lead the Real-Time and Flexible Cyber-Physical Systems (ReFLEX) Lab within the RTDS Research Group.

My research focuses on modelling, scheduling, and timing analysis for cyber-physical systems, with an emphasis on making safety-critical systems more flexible, adaptive, and predictable. I also develop digital-twin techniques for feedback-driven runtime improvement and specialised hardware designs for real-time and embedded systems. This work has been applied across robotics and autonomous systems, self-driving, avionics, control systems, 5G base stations, and transportation, with a focus on operational safety, robustness, and resilience.

Short Bio: I first joined the Real-Time Systems Group at York in 2015 as a PhD student supervised by Prof. Alan Burns, completing my degree in 2019 with a Best Thesis award. Before taking up my lectureship in 2023, I worked as a Research Associate on the MOCHA research project (2019-2023), developing digital-twin and cache-aware scheduling techniques for many-core architectures in next-generation 5G/6G communication base stations, and contributed to the EU H2020 DEIS project on model-based safety assurance for autonomous and cyber-physical systems.

Track record: I have published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 600 citations and an H-index of 13 as of 2026. I regularly serve as a Technical Program Committee member and reviewer for leading conferences and journals in real-time embedded systems, robotics, and design automation, and I also act as an external reviewer for UKRI funding.

You can find more about my research interests and projects on the research page. Information about joining my group is available on PhD opportunities. I also maintain a tracking website for real-time, embedded, and robotics systems, share robotics projects, and keep an amateur photography portfolio.

News

  • (paper) May 2026: Our paper “When Memory Matters: An Evaluation of LSTM-Based Multi-Agent Learning for Multi-Intersection Traffic Signal Control” is accepted at ITSC 2026!
  • (paper) Mar 2026: Our paper “Beyond Exact: Tight WCET Analysis of GPU Kernels with Branch Divergence” is accepted at DAC 2026!
  • (service) Feb 2026: Invited as a TPC member of RTCSA 2026.
  • (service) Jan 2026: Invited as a TPC member of EMSOFT 2026.
  • (service) Jan 2026: Invited as a TPC member of RTNS 2026.
  • (paper) Dec 2025: Our paper “LEFT-RS: A Lock-Free Fault-Tolerant Resource Sharing Protocol for Multicore Real-Time Systems” is accepted at RTSS 2025 (⭐Outstanding Paper⭐)!
  • (service) Nov 2025: Invited as a TPC member of ECRTS 2026.
  • (service) Nov 2025: Invited as a TPC member of Ada Europe 2026.
  • (project) Oct 2025: Our proposal to use a humanoid robot for virtual production (RAVEN-G1) was granted (£48k).
  • (project) Oct 2025: Our proposal on imitation training of humanoid robots for filming was granted via Google Cloud Research Credits Program (£3,731).

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