I was born in China in the early 90s and moved to the US when I was young. My family moved quite a bit throughout the US, particularly in the deep south, where I picked up my "sleeper" Texan accent. I spent quite a bit of time on the road with my family. At some point we moved to the west coast of Canada. I barely met the requirements to graduate from highschool (my last course was "Introductory Chinese" where I directly took the final and earned enough credits to graduate). I was rejected from almost all universities I applied for, most likely due to my unconventionally spotty academic background.
By some miracle I ended up in Toronto where I completed my bachelor of science, master of science, and doctor of philosophy at the St. George campus of University of Toronto. All my degrees are in electrical and computer engineering (ECE).
Why ECE? I certainly didn't choose it. One hypothesis is that my aunt is a power engineer and my family thought that was a stable career. I tried my hands in power once (or twice, or trice), and I found the industry to be "too stable" for my taste and I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit my life to this path. But I did learn valuable lessons during that time. Once you pull the plug, then it's lights out, and no "cutting-edge" research can save it.
I am someone who is interested in all aspects of technology and science, particularly those that can be neatly explained with mathematics. I always felt that mathematics allowed me to have something to think about even when I do not have a computer by my side. My interest eventually carried me to control engineering, a field broad enough to allow me to explore whatever happens to pique my interest. One secret benefit of control engineering is that you can do almost everything, just a little bit.
Here is my curriculum vitae (and quite informal one at that)
Education
University of Toronto Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Doctor of Philosophy November, 2022
Master of Applied Science November, 2017
Bachelor of Applied Science (Minor in Mechatronics) June, 2015
Journal Publication
B. Gao and L. Pavel, “Second-Order Mirror Descent: Convergence in Games Beyond Averaging and Discounting,” in in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 2143-2157, April 2024.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "Continuous-Time Discounted Mirror Descent Dynamics in Monotone Concave Games," in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 66, no. 11, pp. 5451-5458, Nov. 2021
B. Gao and L. Pavel. “Continuous-Time Convergence Rates in Potential and Monotone Games,” SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 2022.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "On Passivity, Reinforcement Learning, and Higher Order Learning in Multiagent Finite Games," in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 121-136, Jan. 2021.
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC) consists of high-quality papers on the theory, design, and applications of control engineering
SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON) contains research articles on the mathematics and applications of control theory and on those parts of optimization theory concerned with the dynamics of deterministic or stochastic systems in continuous or discrete time or otherwise dealing with differential equations, dynamics, infinite-dimensional spaces, or fundamental issues in variational analysis and geometry.
Conference Papers
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "Bandit learning with regularized second-order mirror descent," 2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Cancun, Mexico, 2022.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "Second-order mirror descent: exact convergence beyond strictly stable equilibria in concave games," 2021 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Austin, TX, USA, 2021.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "On the Rate of Convergence of Continuous-Time Game Dynamics in N-Player Potential Games”, in Proc. IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Jeju, South Korea, pp. 1678-1683, 2020.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "Discounted Mirror Descent Dynamics in Concave Games," 2019 IEEE 58th Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Nice, France, 2019, pp. 5942-5947.
B. Gao and L. Pavel, "On Passivity and Reinforcement Learning in Finite Games," 2018 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Miami, FL, USA, 2018, pp. 340-345.
IEEE Control and Decision Conference (CDC) is recognized as the premier scientific and engineering conference dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practice of systems and control.
Preprint
B. Gao and L. Pavel, “On the Properties of the Softmax Function with Application in Game Theory and Reinforcement Learning”, arXiv:1704.00805 [math], Apr. 2017.
(I may or may not have written the above preprint in four hours one afternoon.)
Teaching experience
As a professor at Georgia Tech - Shenzhen
ECE2026 - Introduction to Signal Processing
ECE6270 - Convex Optimization
ECE6551 - Digital Control
ECE6254 - Statistical Machine Learning
ECE6550 - Linear Systems and Control
ECE6563 - Network Control of Multiagent Systems
As a teaching assistant at University of Toronto, St. George Campus
Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, AI
APS1070 - Foundations of Data Analytics and Machine Learning
APS360 - Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
CSC2516 - Neural Networks and Deep Learning
ECE421 - Introduction to Machine Learning (UofT ECE Best TA Award 2021)
ECE1513 - Introduction to Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
CSC2305 - Numerical Methods for Optimization Problems
ECE557 - Linear Control Theory
ECE411 - Discrete-Time Control
ECE311 - Dynamical System and Control
Communication engineering and signal processing
ECE219 - Signals and Systems
Mathematics
MAT290 - Advanced Engineering Mathematics
Work and volunteering
Volunteering
As a volunteer for Engineering Strategies and Practice (ESP) at UofT, I developed multiple engineering design projects for first-year engineering students. Some of the projects included: [A game playing machine that tests human reaction], [An alarm clock that cannot turn off unless the user is awake], [A system for wild animal detection and avoidance], [A smart fridge or recipe recommendation pipeline for the stuck-at-home cook], [A device or system for making friends at the University of Toronto].
Work
2013 – 2014 Intern, Power System Planning, Ontario Power Authority (now a part of Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO))
2021 Doctoral Completion Award
2019 University of Toronto Travel Award $1120
2018 Control and Decision (CDC) conference student travel award $400
2015-17 Ontario Graduate Scholarship
2014 UofT IBBME Laboratory Development Fund – Funding for completion of 3D printed robotic arm and hardware assembly
2014 UofT Max Weber Undergraduate Award in Sociology – Awards are given to the students achieving the five top grades in St. George sections of SOC101Y Introduction to Sociology
I had a relatively late start on many technical skills. My first contact with computer programming was when I started my undergraduate degree. University of Toronto does have a hacker culture, which I picked up on it gradually. As such I have tried my hands on a bunch of programming languages over the years, such as C, C++, Java, Scheme/Racket, Haskell, VB.Net, VBA, SQL, Bash (Shell), Rust.
Some of my past experience with various softwares/hardwares are listed below:
Programming Languages Pick the right tool for the job; I'm not -man.
Machine Learning Libraries Tensorflow, Pytorch, Keras, JAX/Objax, Sci-kit learn
Software Design Tools MATLAB (Simulink), Microsoft Excel (VBA), Google Colab, Visual Studio, PyCharm
Hardware Design Tools Arduino Uno, Xilinx FGPA, Pspice, AutoCad
(Listing these out feels a bit silly because software/hardware come and go and one big thing about being a human is having a limited memory capacity)
I'm quite enthusiastic about learning different languages. Whenever I travel, I would try to learn as much of the local language as possible and converse with the locals.
Technically conversant English
Everyday conversant Chinese
Other (mostly reading) Spanish (I lived in Texas for many years)
Japanese (Self-study)
German (Friends from my ESL class)
Italian (When in Rome..., also very similar to Spanish)
French (Living in Canada)
Korean (Self-study)