Xiaotian (Steven) Dai

About Me

I am a Senior Lecturer (~Associate 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. You can find more about my research interests and projects on the research page.

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 Horizon 2020 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.

Other links:

News

(paper) Aug 2026: Our paper “PAPS: A Predictable and Adaptive Priority Scheme for Tasks with Variable Data Latency” is accepted at RTSS 2026!
(project) Aug 2026: Our proposal on adaptive robotics for XR lighting effects (RAVEN-SCAR) was granted (£20k).
(paper) Aug 2026: Two workshop papers “RAVEN: A Latency-Aware Predictive Digital Twin Framework for Humanoid Robotic Cinematography in Virtual Production” and “Adaptive Decentralised Coordination Algorithms for Autonomous Swarm Robots in Planetary Surface Missions” are accepted at TAROS 2026!
(paper) Jul 2026: Our paper “Reliable Resource Sharing and Analysis for Multicore Mixed-Criticality Systems” is accepted at IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD)!
(paper) Jun 2026: Our paper “CAFT-RS: Fault-Tolerant Resource Sharing Protocols with Diverse Preemption Schemes” is accepted at IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS)!
(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.

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