Yu-Chi "Larry" Ho (; born March 1, 1934) is a Chinese-American mathematician, control theorist, and a professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. He is the co-author of Applied Optimal Control, and an influential researcher in differential games, pattern recognition, and discrete event dynamic systems. Ho was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1987 for pioneering and sustained contributions to applied optimization, control, and systems engineering theory and application. Biography Education Yu-Chi Ho was born on March 1, 1934, in Shanghai, China, and left home at the age of 15 in 1949 to complete his high school education in Hong Kong. In 1950, Ho was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and came to the U.S., where he received a B.S. in electrical engineering in the summer of 1953, at the age of 19. Ho later reported that his initial interests were in mechanical engineering, due to a childhood experience repairing a European ornamental clock without any previous knowledge of its mechanisms. His application to MIT mechanical engineering, however, was routed to the electrical engineering department by mistake, and Ho decided to stay in the department. Ho continued his graduate studies at MIT, receiving a M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1955. After working for Bendix Aviation for three years, Ho moved to Harvard University in 1958, where he completed a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1961. His thesis A Study Optimal Control of Dynamic Systems was advised by Arthur E. Bryson, Jr. and Kumpati S. Narendra. Career After finishing his Ph.D. in the spring of 1961, Yu-Chi Ho returned to Harvard in the fall of 1961 for a teaching appointment, receiving tenure in 1965, and remained in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences until his retirement in 2001. At Harvard, Ho held the title of Gordon McKay Professor of Systems Engineering, Emeritus, as well as the T. Jefferson Coolidge Chair of Applied Mathematics, Emeritus. He was also the visiting professor to the Cockrell Family Regent's Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin in 1989. In 2001, Ho retired from teaching duties at Harvard after 40 years of service and became a Research Professor. He was appointed (part-time) the Chair Professor and Chief Scientist at the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS), Department of Automation, Tsinghua University. In his career, he has supervised 50 Ph.D. students at