Huaiyuan (Joe) Rao 饶怀远

I'm currently a second-year Ph.D student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Institute of Technology (2025-Present) advised by Prof. Matthew Hale. Prior to this, I received my Master degree in ECE from Georgia Tech (2022-2024) and B.Eng. degree in Automation from East China Jiaotong University (2018-2022). I've spent time at CUHK(SZ) Robotics & AI Lab (2023).

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Research

My research interests lie primarily in Differential Privacy, Robotics, Control, Machine Learning and Optimization. (* indicates equal contribution)

End-to-End Differential Privacy in Training Deep Neural Network Classifiers
Huaiyuan Rao, Calvin Hawkins, Alexander Benvenuti, Matthew Hale
Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), Submitted, 2026

Differential Privacy for Symbolic Trajectories via the Permute-and-Flip Mechanism
Alexander Benvenuti, Huaiyuan Rao, Matthew Hale
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Accepted, 2026

Generating Differentially Private Networks with a Modified Erdős-Rényi Model
Huaiyuan Rao, Calvin Hawkins, Alexander Benvenuti, Matthew Hale
American Control Conference (ACC), Accepted, 2026

Synergizing Reinforcement Learning and Classic Control: Optimized Policy Search for Continuum Robots
Guanglin JI*, Huaiyuan Rao*, Qian Gao, Cheng Qian, Wenhao Li, Xiaoqiang Ji, Zhenglong Sun
IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2025

Dynamic Hysteresis Compensation for Tendon-Sheath Mechanism in Flexible Surgical Robots without Distal Perception
Qian Gao, Guanglin Ji, Minyi Sun, Yin Xiao, Huaiyuan Rao, Zhenglong Sun
IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2025

Predicting Chaotic System Behavior using Machine Learning Techniques
Huaiyuan Rao, Yichen Zhao, Hsuan-Pin Chen
Nonlinear Science and Control Engineering, 2025

Talks
Invited Session Talk: Networked Systems Analysis and Control at ACC 2026
New Orleans, Lousiana, May 2026

Student Spotlight Talk at the Georgia Tech DCL Student Symposium 2026
Atlanta, Georgia, Apr 2026

Miscellanea

I play in Georgia Tech Men's Basketball Club. I also played Shenzhen college basketball tournaments and Shenzhen X9 College Rowing tournaments in 2022 and 2023.