Lening Li (郦乐宁)

I am a Research Affiliate at Yale University and a Robotic Lab Advisor at Harvard University. My Yale research focuses on agentic AI for robotics in collaboration with Prof. Na Li. At Harvard, I advise her group on robotics, large language models, and coding agents. I am also pursuing an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, with expected graduation in May 2028.

I earned my Ph.D. in Robotics Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 2022, advised by Prof. Jie Fu. My research lies at the intersection of reinforcement learning, stochastic optimal control, game theory, and formal methods: giving robots high-level task specifications and returning policies with provable guarantees. Before my Ph.D., I completed M.S. degrees in Robotics Engineering and Computer Science at WPI (advised by Prof. Michael A. Gennert), and a B.E. in Information Security alongside a B.A. in English Language and Literature at Harbin Institute of Technology.

Recent Updates

Sep 2026 Joined Yale University as a Research Affiliate. Sep 2026 Our paper Topology-Guided Modular Actor-Critic Learning for Continuous Systems under Temporal Objectives was accepted to the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Control and Computing (IC&C 2026), Harbin, China. Dec 2025 Joined Harvard University as a Robotic Lab Advisor in Prof. Na Li's group. Aug 2025 Started the MBA program at Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper School of Business). May 2025 Team 10102Z (Vinci STEAM), which I coach, won the Middle School World Championship at VEX Worlds 2025 in Dallas.

Earlier updates

Apr 2023 Our paper Probabilistic Planning with Prioritized Preferences over Temporal Logic Objectives was accepted to IJCAI 2023 (acceptance rate ~15%). Jan 2023 Our paper Synthesis of Proactive Sensor Placement in Probabilistic Attack Graphs was accepted to the 2023 American Control Conference. Dec 2022 Earned my Ph.D. in Robotics Engineering from WPI (defended August 23, 2022). Oct 2022 Joined the minibot routing team at Symbotic. Feb 2022 Journal paper Dynamic hypergames for synthesis of deceptive strategies with temporal logic objectives published in IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Oct 2021 Joined the pick team at Berkshire Grey. May 2021 New preprint Policy synthesis for metric interval temporal logic with probabilistic distributions is on arXiv. Dec 2019 Presented Topological approximate dynamic programming under temporal logic constraints at the 58th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2019), Nice, France. Oct 2019 Attended NERC 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania and the Robot Learning Workshop at Lehigh University (travel grant). Jul 2019 Presented Approximate dynamic programming with probabilistic temporal logic constraints at ACC 2019, Philadelphia. Jan 2019 Began a term as President of the WPI Graduate Student Government (through May 2020). Sep 2018 Attended Princeton Day of Optimization. Apr 2018 Two chapters on Team WPI-CMU's approach — Achieving reliable humanoid robot operations in the DARPA Robotics Challenge and What happened at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals — published in The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: Humanoid Robots to the Rescue (Springer). Jan 2018 Journal paper Building an autonomous lane keeping simulator using real-world data and end-to-end learning published in IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine. May 2017 Presented Sampling-based approximate optimal temporal logic planning at ICRA 2017, Singapore. Mar 2017 Journal paper Team WPI-CMU: Achieving reliable humanoid behavior in the DARPA Robotics Challenge published in the Journal of Field Robotics. Nov 2016 Presented BiRRTOpt: A combined sampling and optimizing motion planner for humanoid robots at Humanoids 2016, Cancún, Mexico. Oct 2016 Attended NERC 2016 at Cornell University. Nov 2015 Team WPI-CMU's paper No falls, no resets: Reliable humanoid behavior in the DARPA Robotics Challenge presented at Humanoids 2015, Seoul.