Shared airspace under uncertaintyAircraft fly with a belief region around them and a fan of predicted futures ahead. One aircraft's sensing degrades, so its belief region and predicted futures widen. The highlighted aircraft predicts the conflict and a safety filter bends its path around the uncertain aircraft before it rejoins its route.

PhD Candidate @ IASL · GWU

I develop safe AI-based control systems for multi-agent aircraft both manned and unmanned, especially when sensing fails.

My work spans robust multi-agent reinforcement learning, safety filtering in learned control policies, and language models in the control loop. Next: world (action) models for multi-agent planning.

Robust Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Small UAS Separation Assurance under GPS Degradation and Spoofing

Alex Zongo, Filippos Fotiadis, Ufuk Topcu, Peng Wei

IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2026 · to appear

Runtime Safety Filtering for Learned Small UAS Separation Policies under GNSS Degradation

Alex Zongo, Peng Wei

Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC) 2026 · presented · proceedings forthcoming

  • 3rd Best of Conference
  • Best in Track
  • Best in Session

Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Cooperative Tactical Deconfliction of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

Iman Sharifi, Alex Zongo, Peng Wei

3rd Workshop on Multi-Agent Embodied Intelligent Systems Meet Agentic-AI era: Opportunities, Challenges and Futures (MEIS@CVPR 2026)

eVTOL Aircraft Energy Consumption Estimation with Conflict Resolution in High-Density Airspaces

Alex Zongo, Peng Wei

Integrated Communications Navigation, and Surveillance (ICNS) Conference

  • Best in Session

All publications

I am a PhD candidate in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The George Washington University, advised by Prof. Peng Wei in the Intelligent Aerospace Systems Lab (IASL). In Summer 2026 I was a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley (CITRIS and the Banatao Institute) with Prof. Alexandre Bayen, working on multi-modal aircraft trajectory prediction.

My research asks how learned decision-makers, such as reinforcement learning policies and language models, can be trusted in dense, safety-critical multi-agent systems. I work on separation assurance for drones and advanced air mobility, with theory (adversarial robustness bounds), algorithms (multi-agent RL and runtime safety filters), and closed-loop evaluation in air traffic simulation.

Before GWU, I earned a master’s in Control Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University, where I worked on reinforcement learning for fault-tolerant flight control, and a B.S. in Aircraft Design and Engineering at Beihang University (BUAA), after earlier studies at National Cheng Kung University. Full details are in my CV.

Robust multi-agent RL under degraded sensing

Separation policies for dense drone and aircraft traffic that stay safe when GPS/GNSS position reports are noisy, delayed, or spoofed.

Runtime safety for learned policies

Filters that sit around a deployed policy, without retraining it, and correct what it sees or what it does when inputs cannot be trusted.

Foundation models in the control loop

Language models as decision-makers and advisors for air traffic and maritime collision avoidance, with fine-tuning, fallback control, and closed-loop evaluation.

Oct 2026

Gave a talk on vision-language-action models on the Embodied AI panel at SEINAR 2026 (World AI Week).

Sep 2026

Presented Runtime Safety Filtering for Learned Small UAS Separation Policies under GNSS Degradation at DASC 2026 in Orlando, Florida. The paper received best-in-session, best-in-track, and 3rd Best of Conference paper awards. Slides.

Sep 2026

Gave a guest lecture on diffusion models and flow matching for GWU’s graduate course on Large Language and Vision Models.

Sep 2026

Two papers accepted at AIAA SciTech 2027, on LLMs for air traffic control (with UC Berkeley) and regional air mobility energy assessment, and one at IEEE OCEANS 2026 on LLM-guided RL for maritime collision avoidance.

Jun 2026

Presented a poster “Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Cooperative Tactical Deconfliction of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems” at the CVPR 2026 Workshop on Multi-Agent Embodied Intelligent Systems Meet the Generative-AI Era (MEIS), Denver, Colorado.
Earlier news

May 2026

Presented a poster on “Robust MARL for Small UAS Separation Assurance under GPS Degradation and Spoofing” at the ACC 2026 Workshop on Autonomy in Transportation, New Orleans, Louisiana.

May 2026

Started a summer appointment as Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley (CITRIS and the Banatao Institute) with Prof. Alexandre Bayen, working on multi-modal aircraft trajectory prediction from ADS-B data and ATC voice communications.

Apr 2026

Presented eVTOL Aircraft Energy Consumption Estimation with Conflict Resolution in High-Density Airspaces at ICNS 2026, Herndon, Virginia. The paper received a best-in-session paper award.

Dec 2025

Started a blog post series on Air Traffic Control.

Jan 2025

Began serving as a Teaching Assistant for MAE 3134 — Linear Systems Dynamics at George Washington University.

Sep 2024

Hosted and organized the Safe and Responsible AI workshop, featuring the FAA, HASS COE, Johns Hopkins APL, and MIT Lincoln Labs, as well as TRAILS, NIST AI, and RAI UK.

Aug 2024

Started my PhD and research assistantship in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at George Washington University.

Aug 2024

Presented my research on Fault-Tolerant Flight Control at the International Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control (ICGNC 2024).

May 2024

Graduated with a Master’s in Control Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University.

Reviewer. Journals: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics; IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems; IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems; Transportation Research Part C; Journal of Aerospace Information Systems; Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Conferences: IEEE CDC, IEEE ITSC, AAAI, ICRA, ICGNC.

Organizing. Hosted the 2024 Safe and Responsible AI workshop at GWU, with speakers from the FAA, Johns Hopkins APL, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and NIST.

  • Doctoral research

    George Washington University

    Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering · IASL

  • Visiting research · Summer 2026

    UC Berkeley

    CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

  • Research support

    NASA

    University Leadership Initiative

For research collaborations or internship opportunities, reach out by email.