Lening Li (郦乐宁), Ph.D., MBA Candidate

I am currently a Robotic Lab Advisor at Harvard University (advising Prof. Na Li’s group) and a Senior Software Engineer at Symbotic, specializing in multi-agent systems. Concurrently, I am pursuing an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University (starting August 2025).

I earned my Ph.D. in Robotics Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in December 2022, where I was advised by Prof. Jie Fu. My research and professional expertise lie at the intersection of Reinforcement Learning, Stochastic Optimal Control, Game Theory, Formal Methods, and Robotics.

Prior to my doctoral studies, I completed two Master’s degrees at WPI: one in Robotics Engineering (May 2021) and another in Computer Science (May 2016), advised by Prof. Michael A. Gennert. I also hold a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Harbin Institute of Technology, China (2014).

My academic background and industrial experience have equipped me with a diverse skill set to bridge the gap between theoretical research and real-world robotic applications.

To see more details, click my curriculum vitae or 履历.

Last modified date: 02/03/2026

News

• I started my MBA education at Carnegie Mellon University in August 2025.
• My new paper Probabilistic Planning with Prioritized Preferences over Temporal Logic Objectives is accepted to 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2023, acceptance rate ~15%).
• My new paper Synthesis of Proactive Sensor Placement In Probabilistic Attack Graphs is accepted to 2023 American Control Conference where I will be presenting my work.
• I joined minibot routing team at Symbotic on 3rd October 2022.
• I earned my Ph.D. degree in Robotics Engineering from WPI in December 2022.
• My journal paper Dynamic hypergames for synthesis of deceptive strategies with temporal logic objectives was published on IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.
• I passed my Ph.D. final defense on 23rd of August 2022.
• I joined pick team at Berkshire Grey on 4th October 2021.
• I served as President of Graduate Student Government from Jan 2019 - May 2020.
• I attended Robot Learning Workhop 2019 in Lehigh University.
• I attended NERC 2019 at University of Pennsylvania.
• I presented my work Approximate dynamic programming with probabilistic temporal logic constraints on American Control Conference 2019.
• I attended Princeton Day of Optimization 2018.
• I presented my work Sampling-based approximate optimal temporal logic planning on ICRA 2017, Singapore.
• I presented my work Birrtopt: A combined sampling and optimizing motion planner for humanoid robots on Humanoids 2016, Cancun, Mexico.
• I attended NERC 2016 at Cornell University.