Dr Lily (Li) Qiao

Senior Lecturer in Space Systems Engineering at the School of Engineering and Technology (SET), UNSW Canberra campus

Lily completed her PhD in Guidance Navigation and Control in 2011, including a study exchange at the School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Before joining UNSW Canberra, she was research associate at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at UNSW Sydney from 2011 to 2014, working for the design of Garada Earth Observation Mission and EC0 CubeSat Mission. Then, she joined as a research associate at the Capability System Centre, School of Engineering and IT, University of New South Wales, Canberra. In 2018, she was promoted to lecturer. In 2023, she has been promoted to Senior Lecturer. 

Lily's teaching spans postgraduate and undergraduate.  She mainly engaged in PG teaching for UNSW Canberra Space Master Education Program since she is the course convenor for ZEIT8008 Space Systems Design, and ZEIT8009 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). For undergraduates, she is convenor of the course ZEIT4227 Radar Technology and Application. She has chaired the Space Panel of UG students' Final Year Project from 2022–2023.

Her research interests lie in space engineering systems design, and applying AI/CI based computational system engineering analysis methods on include, but not be limited to, space systems. Her area covers a wide range of topics, including autonomous spacecraft navigation based on Global Navigation Satellites System (GNSS) and celestial navigation, spacecraft attitude determination and control, tradespace exploration, system modular analysis, etc. She has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed conferences and journals. She has two PhD students to complete, and currently has six PhD students under supervision. You can view her Google Scholar profile here.

She is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. She has been an organization committee member for the Australian Space Research Conference since 2022, and has served as Deputy Chair of the Program Committee since 2023.  She is an IEEE member, and her current volunteer roles are IEEE Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Section Chair and the Aerospace Electronic Systems Society (AESS) chapter at the ACT Section.

Ph.D. scholarships ($35,000 per year) are available for high-achieving students (with H1/High Distinction in UG and/or Masters by Research) under my supervision. If you are interested, please feel free to get in contact with me. A self-assessment tool is available to get a general feel for your competitiveness. You need to meet the English language requirements. If you are eligible and interested in working on the listed PhD projects below (or closely related) topics or keywords, please send me your CV, academic transcripts, the result of the self-assessment, and a research proposal (less than 5 pages). Your research proposal should contain your research problems (what do you want to do), motivation (why do you want to do this), a brief review of the most relevant literature (what have you already known), proposed methodology (how to do) and expected outcome (what do you want to achieve). For more information, please refer to the following links on how and when to apply for a research degree. You can seek my advice/help during the construction of your Research Proposal.