Masanao Aoki (青木 正直, Aoki Masanao, May 14, 1931 – July 24, 2018) was a Japanese engineer and economist.
He was a Professor emeritus of Economics at University of California, Los Angeles.
He earned a BA and MSc in physics from the University of Tokyo, and a PhD in engineering from UCLA in 1960.
Aoki's change of research areas is reflected in the two editions of his influential textbook, Optimization of Stochastic Systems.
Originally published in 1967 it contained a rigorous treatment of optimal control methods in engineering,[2] whereas the second edition (published in 1989) was amended by numerous applications in economics.