Xiaobo Tan

Xiaobo Tan (born 1972 in Danyang, China) is a Chinese-American electrical engineer and professor at Michigan State University. He is an MSU Foundation Professor and the Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, and serves as the Director of the Smart Microsystems Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his contributions to modeling and control of smart materials and underwater robotics.

Education and career Tan received a B.E. in automatic control from Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 1995 and an M.E. in automatic control from Tsinghua in 1998. He is currently MSU Foundation Professor and the Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

A project from his laboratory is GRACE (Gliding Robot ACE), a biomimetic robotic fish that uses electroactive polymers to propel itself through water. The robot is equipped with sensors to measure water temperature, quality, and other environmental data, and has been used to track fish populations and monitor invasive species in the Great Lakes.

Awards and honors National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2006 Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University, 2020

Professional service Tan served as General Chair of the 2023 American Control Conference in San Diego and General Chair of the 2018 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference. He has also served as Program Chair of the 15th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (2011), Finance Chair of the 2015 American Control Conference, and Registration Chair of the 2016 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics.

He has also served as a Senior Editor for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and an Associate Editor for Automatica.

Since 2024, Tan has been a Member of the Board of Advisors at Motmot Inc., a Detroit-based company developing autonomous underwater robots for water infrastructure inspection.