👋 About Me

Greetings! I am a Ph.D. candidate at UWaterloo, supervised by Amir Khajepour and Freda Shi. My research interests include large language models in autonomous driving, time-series prediction. If you are interested in my research, would like to collaborate, or have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me via email at s95huang@uwaterloo.ca.

My current research highlights the following perspectives:

• Large Language Models in Autonomous Driving
  • More human-like, interpretable Decision-making
  • Safe Driving in dynamic environments considering social norms and interaction
• Learning-based Algorithms in Autonomous Driving
  • Trajectory/motion prediction
  • End-to-end learning for planning
• Energy Systems (including vehicle)
  • Time Series Forecasting
  • Offline Optimization and online management

Prior to Phd studies, I completed my M.A.Sc. in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at UWaterloo and worked at Almon equipment Ltd. and LoopX Innovation Inc.

I have 4 years of work experience in ADAS systems and autonomous driving software development across passenger vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and mining vehicles. I participated in the WATonoBus project at MVS Lab working on software and algorithmic development of decision-making module required for Canada’s first autonomous shuttle bus approved via the ministry’s autonomous vehicle pilot.

Recent News

• 2025.05: 🎉 I have received and declined OGS and the QEII-GSST due to conflict with NSERC PGS D.
• 2025.05: 🎉 I have received and accepted NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship – Doctoral (PGS D).
• 2024.09: 🎉 I have joined CompLING Lab, co-supervised by Prof. Freda Shi
• 2024.08: 🎉 I have completed my comprehensive exam.
• 2024.07: 📣 2 papers accepted to IEEE ITSC 2024, see you in Edmonton,ON, Canada.
• 2024.01: 📣 WATonoBus Project gets reported in MathWorks
• 2023.05: 🎉 I have started my Ph.D. at MVSL lab, supervised by Prof. Amir Khajepour.

📝 Publications

You can find my publication profiles on Google Scholar.

‡: corresponding author

*: first author

Journal Papers

LLM in Autonomous Driving:

• S. Huang*, F. Shi, C. Sun, J. Zhong, M. Ning, Y. Yang, Y. Lu, H. Wang, and A. Khajepour, “Drivesotif: Advancing sotif through multimodal large language models,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2025.

• Y. Cui, S. Huang*, J. Zhong, Z. Liu, Y. Wang, C. Sun, B. Li, X. Wang, and A. Khajepour, “Drivellm: Charting the path toward full autonomous driving with large language models,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1450–1464, 2023.

Autonomous Driving:

• T. Huang, R. Fu, Q. Sun, Z. Deng, S. Huang, and L. Jin, “Toward human-vehicle collaboration for automated vehicles: A review and perspective,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025.
• L. Jin, T. Huang, Z. Deng, and S. Huang, “Vehicle trajectory prediction based on driver’s cognitive mechanism,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2025.
• J. Zhong, L. Khoshnevisan, S. Huang, M. Pirani, Y. V. Pant, and A. Khajepour, “Multi-objective agent-based model predictive controller for plug-and-play vehicle control,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025.

Energy Systems:

• W. Ye, M. S. Herdem, S. Huang, W. Sun, J. Liu, J. Nathwani, and J. Z. Wen, “Component capacity optimization of a renewable energy system using data-driven two-stage algorithmic approach,” Energy Conversion and Management, vol. 312, p. 118 588, 2024.
• S. Huang* and A. Khajepour, “A new adiabatic compressed air energy storage system based on a novel compression strategy,” Energy, vol. 242, p. 122 883, 2022.

Conference Papers

• Y.Yang*, M. Ning, S. Huang^‡, E. Hashemi, A. Khajepourr, “Intelligent mobility system- integrated planning and control for indoor settings,” IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), 2024.

• M. Ning, Y. Cui, Y. Yang, S. Huang, Z. Liu, A. R. Alghooneh, E. Hashemi, and A. Khajepour, “Multi-modal perception for intelligent indoor mobility,” IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), 2024.

Other

• Wei Zhu, Yue Ying, Yikai Chen, Shucheng Huang, et al. Real-time traffic sign detection network based on Swin Transformer, 2023.

Patent

• C. Yu, H. Zheng, J. Zhang, C. Yaodong, S. Huang, J. Zhong, and A. Khajepour, Systems and methods for estimating a state for positioning autonomous vehicles transitioning between different environments, US Patent App. 18/600,238, Sep. 2024.

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2025-Present, NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship – Doctoral, NSERC
• 2025, President’s Graduate Scholarship, University of Waterloo
• 2025, OGS/QEII-GSST, Ontario, (declined)
• 2023-Present, Engineering Domestic Doctoral Student Award, University of Waterloo
• 2019, Engineering Domestic Graduate Scholarship, University of Waterloo

📖 Educations

• 2023.05 - Present, Ph.D. in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo

• 2018 - 2020, M.A.Sc. in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo

• 2014 - 2018, B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Penn State University

💬 Invited Talks

• 2024.12, Advancing perception sotif through multi-modal large language models, Tsinghua University, China

💻 Work Experience

• 2020.01 - 2024.03, CTO & Co-founder, LoopX Innovation Inc., Waterloo, ON, Canada. (My startup)
• 2020.11 - 2022.11, Autonomous system control engineer, Almon Equipment Ltd, Toronto, ON, Canada.

📚 Teaching Experience

• Spring 2019, Teaching Assistant, Robot Manipulators
• Fall 2019, Teaching Assistant, Fluid Power Control Systems

📝 Professional Service

📊 Skills

Programming ⋄ MATLAB/Simulink, Python (Pytorch), C++, ROS/ROS2
Software ⋄ CarSim/TruckSim, Carla, Prescan
Hardware ⋄ Arduino, dSPACE, NVIDIA Jetson, Raspberry Pi, STM32
Languages ⋄ Chinese - Mandarin (Native), English - Academic/Business Professional