Research Expertise and Interest

embedded and cyberphysical systems, artificial intelligence, AR/VR, computer science, robotics, arial robots, cybersecurity, cyber defense, homeland defense, nonholonomic systems, control of hybrid systems, sensor networks, interactive visualization, robotic telesurgery, rapid prototyping

Research Description

S. Shankar Sastry is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His areas of research are embedded and autonomous software, AI, robotics,  computer vision,  nonlinear and adaptive control and learning,  robotic vehicles in the air, ground and underwater, control of hybrid systems, robotic surgery, and biological motor control and prosthetics. 

He has also been the Faculty Director of the Blum Center of Developing Economies from 2007 to 2022. He was the Dean of Engineering from 2008-2018, and the Director of the Center for Information Technology in the Interests of Society from 2005-2008. He was Chairman, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from 2001-2005. He was the Director of the Information Technology Office at DARPA. (with the equivalent military rank of a Major General) from 1999-2001.  From 1996–1999, he was the Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory at Berkeley, an organized research unit on the Berkeley campus conducting research in computer sciences and all aspects of electrical engineering.

Dr. Sastry received his Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley. He was on the faculty of MIT as Asst. Professor from 1980–1982 and at Harvard University as a chaired Gordon Mc Kay professor in 1994. He has received honorary doctorates from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (2008), University of Waterloo, Canada (2016), and the Politecnico di Torino (2018) and an MA Honoris Causa from Harvard in 1994. 

Generalized Principal Component Analysis co-authored with R. Vidal and Yi Ma is his latest book, published by Springer Verlag in 2016. He has coauthored over 550 technical papers and 10 books, including Adaptive Control: Stability, Convergence, and Robustness (with M. Bodson, Prentice Hall, 1989),  A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation (with R. Murray and Z. Li, CRC Press, 1994),  Nonlinear Systems: Analysis, Stability, and Control (Springer Verlag: ANalysis, Stability, and Control), An Invitation to #-D Vision: From Images to Geometric Models (with Y. Ma, S. Soatto, and J. Kosecka, Springer Verlag, 2003). He has co-edited Hybrid Control II, Hybrid Control IV and Hybrid Control V (with P. Antsaklis, A. Nerode, and W. Kohn, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1995, 1997, and 1999, respectively) and co-edited Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (with T.Henzinger, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1998) and Essays in Mathematical Robotics (with Baillieul and Sussmann, Springer-Verlag IMA Series).

Dr. Sastry has served as Associate Editor for numerous publications, including IEEE Proceedings, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control; IEEE Control Magazine; IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems; the Journal of Mathematical Systems, Estimation and Control; IMA Journal of Control and Information; the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing; Journal of Biomimetic Systems and Materials.

Dr. Sastry was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 “for pioneering contributions to the design of hybrid and embedded systems.” He also received the President of India Gold Medal in 1977, the IBM Faculty Development award for 1983–1985, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985 and the Eckman Award of the of the American Automatic Control Council in 1990, an M.A. (honoris causa) from Harvard in 1994, Fellow of the IEEE in 1994, the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology in 1999, and the David Marr prize for the best paper at the International Conference on Computer Vision in 1999. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004).  He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the International House at Berkeley in 2017 and the Berkeley Citation in 2018. He received the Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific Fund in 2010. 

He has been  on the corporate boards of C3,  HCL Technologies, and   the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Eriksholm, the research arm of Oticon.  He is currently on the board of Lexmark, LLC. He is the Honorary Chancellor of Plaksha University in Mohali, India.