Hai-Tao Zhang is the Deputy Dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, a Second-Level Professor, a Distinguished Scholar at Huazhong, a Doctoral Supervisor, a recipient of the State Council Special Allowance, a National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars awardee, a Young Scholar in the Ministry of Education's Changjiang Scholars Program, a National Young Talent in the "Ten Thousand Talents Program," a National Excellent Youth Science Fund awardee, the Director of the Ministry of Education Engineering Center for Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, and the Chief Scientist of the National Key R&D Program on New-Generation Artificial Intelligence under the National Science and Technology Innovation 2030 initiative. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2005, conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge in 2007, was promoted to professor in 2010, and was appointed as a doctoral supervisor in the same year.

Zhang specializes in areas such as swarm intelligence, autonomous unmanned surface vehicle swarms, and multi-robot collaborative manufacturing. He has led several major national-level projects, including the National Science and Technology Innovation 2030 Key Projects, two joint key projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and GF Key Projects. He has published over 150 SCI-indexed papers, including more than 100 papers in prestigious journals such as Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Communications, National Science Review, Automatica, and IEEE Transactions. He has authored three English monographs published by Springer. Zhang has received two First Prizes for Natural Science in Hubei Province and one First Prize for Technological Invention in Guangdong Province, ranking first in these awards. He has been listed among Stanford University's top 2% of global scientists. His theoretical achievements in swarm intelligence have been highlighted by Nature Physics, and his applied research results have been reported by the Ministry of National Defense and the State Council. He holds 37 authorized invention patents, six of which have been transferred, and has contributed to one national standard. His research achievements have been commercialized in organizations such as China State Shipbuilding Corporation and Guangzhou Shipyard International. He is a board member of the Chinese Association of Command and Control and has served as an editorial board member or associate editor for journals such as IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, Engineering (the journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering), Unmanned Systems, Control Theory and Applications, and Robot. Additionally, he has been on the program committees of important international conferences such as IEEE CDC, ACC, and IFAC.