Mei-Lin Zhou

Mei-Lin Zhou is Director of Autonomy at the Osaka campus, leading Halcyon's work on onboard AI. Her team built the autopilot that lets a crew of just three fly the 612-metre Atlas Heavy Freighter, and the convoy-coordination system used by Leviathan Ore Hauler fleets in the Belt.

Mei-Lin is a strong advocate of human-on-the-loop design: Halcyon's autonomy assists pilots rather than replacing them. She now oversees the long-duration autonomy stack for the Odyssey Deep Explorer and Eidolon Lightsail Prototype, where light-speed delays make Earth-based control impossible.

Mei-Lin holds a doctorate in multi-agent systems and joined Halcyon from a research lab building autonomous ocean vessels. She leads Halcyon's partnerships with universities on AI assurance and is a frequent speaker on how to make spacecraft autonomy trustworthy, explainable and safe for crews working far from home.