Rate My Professor Lei Miao

Dr. Lei Miao is Professor of Mechatronics Engineering in the Department of Engineering Technology at Middle Tennessee State University, a position he has held since his promotion to full professor. He joined MTSU in fall 2015 as an assistant professor. Miao earned his Ph.D. from Boston University. His academic interests center on discrete event systems, particularly those with real-time constraints, optimal control policies, energy-efficient transmission scheduling in wireless sensor and networks, secret sharing for security in IoT, and intelligent transportation systems including adaptive traffic signal control, performance evaluation, and operations for connected and automated vehicles. He directs the RECLAB at MTSU, emphasizing real-time embedded control laboratory research.

As principal investigator, Miao has obtained substantial grant funding exceeding $200,000 from agencies such as the Tennessee Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Nashville Department of Transportation, Amazon Web Services, and MTSU internal programs. Key projects include "Using Big Data and Machine Learning to Evaluate and Optimize the Performance of Traffic Signals in Tennessee" ($104,707, 2020-2022), "Establishing a National Summer Transportation Institute" ($31,000, 2024), "Development of Rules of Engagement and Operation Procedures for Autonomous Vehicles" ($13,663, 2024-2025), and "A Cloud-Based Radio Map for Real-World Indoor Localization and Navigation" ($2,500, 2020-2021). His prolific publication record includes highly influential papers such as "Recent Advances in Connected and Automated Vehicles" (Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, 2019, 390 citations), "Recent Advances in Traffic Signal Performance Evaluation" (2022, 34 citations), "Adaptive Traffic Light Control with Quality-of-Service Provisioning for Connected and Automated Vehicles at Isolated Intersections" (IEEE Access, 2021), and foundational contributions like "Optimality of Static Control Policies in Some Discrete Event Systems" and "Receding Horizon Control for a Class of Discrete Event Systems with Real-Time Constraints" (both IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2005 and 2007). Miao has also authored book chapters on energy-latency trade-offs in wireless sensor networks and AI for privacy conservation in remote learning. He serves as graduate faculty for the M.S. in Engineering Technology, Computational and Data Science programs, and as a member of the MTSU Faculty Senate through 2026.