Maochao Xiao is a PhD student in Aeronautics and Space Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome. He shows interest in direct numerical simulation (DNS) of complex turbulent flows, and turbulence modelling for large eddy simulation (LES) and Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS). Recently, his main research activties focus on DNS of rotating pipe turbulence for drag reduction and development of robust wall models for large-eddy simulation based on reinforcement learning (RL). He received his master's degree at Tsinghua University.