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.

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 earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2002, where he was advised by John S. Baras and P. S. Krishnaprasad. From 2002 to 2004, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland.

Tan joined Michigan State University as an assistant professor in 2004. 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. He also serves as Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Tan's research focuses on underwater robotics, soft robotics, electroactive polymer sensors and actuators, and modeling and control of systems with hysteresis. He directs the Smart Microsystems Laboratory at MSU, which develops bio-inspired underwater robots for mobile sensing applications.

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.

Tan has published over 300 papers and holds six U.S. patents in his research areas.

• National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2006
• Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2017
• Distinguished Alumni Award, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, 2018
• Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award (senior category), MSU College of Engineering, 2018
• Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019
• Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University, 2020
• William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award, Michigan State University, 2023

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. In 2024, he was elected Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, with his term beginning in January 2026.

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.