Guannan Qu
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Guannan Qu is an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon University. He received B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2014, and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2019. He was a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2021. His research interest lies broadly in machine learning, control theory, robotics, optimization, with a recent focus on developing fundamental principles in generative AI and physical AI towards interpretability, scalability, and safety. His research is recognized by NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR YIP, and multiple best (student) paper awards or finalists, including ECC 2026, ICRA 2025, AAAI 2025 Workshop on Multi-Agent AI in the Real World, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, among others.
Making AI more safe and reliable for engineering systems
Education
2019 Ph.D, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University
2014 BS, Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University
Media mentions
CMU Engineering
Coordinating AI workloads and energy use for sustainable data centers
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are partnering with Bosch Research (Pittsburgh, PA) to explore how AI data centers can operate more efficiently by coordinating computing workloads with energy availability.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
2024 NSF CAREER Awards
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded CyLab faculty members and Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professors Giulia Fanti, Guannan Qu, and Akshitha Sriraman the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, a prestigious five-year grant given to junior faculty for research and education.
CMU Engineering
2024 NSF CAREER Awards
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Giulia Fanti, Guannan Qu, and Akshitha Sriraman, all assistant professors of electrical and computer engineering, the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab awards 2023 seed funding
This year, CyLab has awarded $450K in seed funding to 20 faculty, staff, and students in five departments across three colleges at CMU.