Cong Liu
Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of California, Riverside
congl@ucr.edu · 414 Winston Chung Hall
I am deeply inspired by a future where robots autonomously accomplish real-world tasks, even collaboratively building cities on the Moon. This personal interest has guided my research over the past few years. Drawing on my background and experience in real-time operating systems, on-device robot learning, scheduling theory, and distributed systems principles, I focus on two questions:
- How can we advance the design and implementation of operating systems that can be readily deployed on learning-enabled robots, such as Optimus and Figure 01?
- How can we leverage real time computing and distributed systems principles to enable robust, time-predictable multi-robot coordination and continual learning from the environment, including through XR-based teleoperation?
If you are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. with me, please email me with your research interests and examples of your work.
Recent Publications
(Complete list)- Linux AGX: An Adaptive GPU eXtension to Linux Fair Scheduling for Physical AI and Robotic Systems
- DARTSrt: A Real-Time MARL Framework with Bounded Auction Latency and Schedulability
- Real-Time Continual Learning on Embedded GPUs
- RELAXR: Real-time Execution Framework for Latency-aware AI-native Extended Reality
- MATER: Mutually Aware Framework for Teleoperated-robot with Extended Reality
- LeMix: Unified Scheduling for LLM Training and Inference on Multi-GPU Systems
Students
- Seonwoo Jang
- Jaafar Al Shamari (co-advised with Jun Sheng from ME)
- Zeli Liu (co-advised with Yinglun Zhu from ECE)
- Yifan Chen
- Soheil Shirvani
- Ziliang Zhang (co-advised with Hyoseung Kim from ECE)
Alumni and placements after graduation
- Zexin Li 2026 · Research Fellow, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
- Yufei Li 2025 · Research scientist, Meta
- Simin Chen 2024 · Postdoctoral researcher, Columbia University
- Junfeng Guo 2023 · Postdoctoral researcher, University of Maryland
- Soroush Bateni 2022 · Postdoctoral researcher, UC Berkeley
- Julie Rauer2022 · FICO
- Zheng Dong2019 · Assistant professor, Wayne State University
- Husheng Zhou2019 · Senior research scientist, VMware
- Guangmo Tong2018 · Assistant professor, University of Delaware
- Aritra SamantaM.S. 2023
- Yaswanth YadlapalliM.S. 2022
- Zelun KongM.S. 2020
- Yuankun ZhuM.S. 2019
- Yue MaM.S. 2017 · Amazon
- Xia ZhangM.S. 2016 · IBM
- Yuchuan LiuM.S. 2016 · NVIDIA
- Gbadebo AyoadeM.S. 2015
- Mozi ChenVisiting Ph.D. student, 2017–2018
Teaching
- CS 202: Advanced Operating Systems (UCR)
- EE 128: Building Embedded Sensing and Control Systems with Microcontrollers (UCR)
- Advanced Distributed Systems (UT Dallas)
- Advanced Operating Systems (UT Dallas)
- Real-Time and Embedded Systems (UT Dallas)
I received an Outstanding Teaching Award at UT Dallas in 2015.
Short Bio & Awards
I was previously an associate professor at UT Dallas (until 2022) and a full-time visiting professor at ETH Zurich (2020–2021). I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill (Tar Heel!) in 2013, advised by Jim Anderson, my master’s degree from Auburn University (War Eagle!), and my bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University of Technology in China.
- NSF CAREER Award, 2017
- Outstanding Paper Award, RTSS 2026, 2025, and 2017; RTAS 2018
- Best Paper Award, RTAS 2018
- Best Paper Award, RTCSA 2012
- Best Student Paper Award, RTSS 2009
- Best Paper Runner-up, RTCSA 2017
- Top-10 Papers Award, INFOCOM 2017