Leilei Cui
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Education
PhD, Electrical Engineering, New York University, 2024
MS, Control Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2019
BS, Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2016
Biography
Leilei Cui is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico since August 2025. He was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from June 2024 to July 2025. He received his M.Sc. degree in Control Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 2019, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from New York University (NYU) in 2024. His research lies at the intersection of control theory, optimization, and reinforcement learning, with a particular focus on applications to robotic systems. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Paper Award from Control Theory and Technology, the Dante Youla Award for graduate research excellence, and the Alexander Hessel Award for the best Ph.D. dissertation in Electrical Engineering at NYU.
Teaching Interests
- Learning-based Control for Robotics
- Dynamics and Control
- Robotics
Research Interests
- Reinforcement Learning
- Optimal Control
- Optimization
- Robotic Control