XD2 Lab

Extreme-Condition Dynamics & Design Lab — designing systems that operate near their instability limits

Sicheng He

Sicheng He

Assistant Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

sicheng@utk.edu

Dougherty Engineering Bldg

Knoxville, TN 37996

Welcome

Our mission: To develop structured and differentiable representations of complex dynamical systems that enable scalable analysis, physical insight, and optimal design.

The XD2 Lab develops mathematical and computational frameworks to represent, interpret, and optimize complex nonlinear dynamical systems — with emphasis on engineering systems that operate near their instability limits.

Explore Our Research Meet the Team

Latest News

Dec 2025
Rohit Kanchi and Ben Melanson presenting at NeurIPS 2025!
Dec 2024
New lab website launched!
Aug 2023
Prof. He joins UTK MABE as Assistant Professor

Open Positions

Ph.D. positions available!

We are looking for motivated students interested in MDO, computational physics, scientific computing, and fluid mechanics.

Graduate students from MABE, EECS, ISE, and applied math at UTK are welcome to reach out.

View Details

Research Areas

Structured Representations

  • Time-spectral methods
  • Torus methods for quasi-periodic dynamics
  • Floquet stability theory

Operator-Theoretic Analysis

  • Resolvent analysis
  • Differentiable modal decompositions
  • Optimization-compatible reduced coordinates

Optimization, Control & Learning

  • Adjoint-based stability optimization
  • Multidisciplinary design optimization
  • Scientific ML for inference and design

XD2 Lab • University of Tennessee, Knoxville • Department of MAE