Bio

Somil Bansal is an assistant professor at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford. Before joining Stanford, he was an assistant professor in the ECE department at the University of Southern California. He received an MS and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from the University of California at Berkeley in 2014 and 2020, respectively. Before that, he obtained a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2012. After his PhD, he spent a year as a Research Scientist at Waymo (formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car project). He has also collaborated closely with companies like Skydio, Google, Boeing, as well as NASA AMES/JPL. Somil is broadly interested in developing mathematical tools and algorithms for the control and analysis of safety-critical autonomous and robotic systems, with a special emphasis on ensuring the safety of learning-enabled systems. Somil has received several awards, most notably the NSF CAREER award, the Eli Jury Award at UC Berkeley for his doctoral research, the RSS Pioneer Award, and the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.

Academic Appointments

Honors & Awards

  • IEEE Early Career Award in Robotics and Automation, Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) (2026)
  • CAREER Award, NSF (2022)
  • Eli Jury Award, UC Berkeley (2020)
  • RSS Pioneer, RSS (2019)
  • Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley (2019)

Professional Education

  • PhD, UC Berkeley, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (2020)
  • MS, UC Berkeley, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (2014)
  • BTech, IIT Kanpur, Electrical Engineering (2012)

Additional Info

2025-26 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Safety-Aware Imitation Learning via MPC-Guided Disturbance Injection IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Qiu, L., Ciftci, Y., Bansal, S. 2026; 11 (6): 7222-7229

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2026.3685942

    View details for Web of Science ID 001756792900014

  • Safety Evaluation of Motion Plans Using Trajectory Predictors as Forward Reachable Set Estimators IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Chakraborty, K., Feng, Z., Veer, S., Sharma, A., Ding, W., Topan, S., Ivanovic, B., Pavone, M., Bansal, S. 2026; 11 (3): 3262-3269

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2026.3653336

    View details for Web of Science ID 001681003600033

  • One Filter to Deploy Them All: Robust Safety for Quadrupedal Navigation in Unknown Environments IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS Lin, A., Peng, S., Bansal, S. 2026; 42: 545-560

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TRO.2025.3644957

    View details for Web of Science ID 001666916900001

  • DualGuard MPPI: Safe and Performant Optimal Control by Combining Sampling-Based MPC and Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Borquez, J., Raus, L., Ciftci, Y., Bansal, S. 2025; 10 (7): 6944-6951

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2025.3568686

    View details for Web of Science ID 001502469600015

  • Stable-BC: Controlling Covariate Shift With Stable Behavior Cloning IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Mehta, S. A., Ciftci, Y., Ramachandran, B., Bansal, S., Losey, D. P. 2025; 10 (2): 1952-1959

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2025.3526439

    View details for Web of Science ID 001398605700005

  • A Physics-Informed Machine Learning Framework for Safe and Optimal Control of Autonomous Systems Tayal, M., Singh, A., Kolathaya, S., Bansal, S. edited by Singh, A., Fazel, M., Hsu, D., Lacoste-Julien, S., Berkenkamp, F., Maharaj, T., Wagstaff, K., Zhu, J. JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH. 2025: 59237-59258

    View details for Web of Science ID 001693164800251

  • Linear Supervision for Nonlinear, High-Dimensional Neural Control and Differential Games Sharpless, W., Feng, Z., Bansal, S., Herbert, S. edited by Ozay, N., Balzano, L., Panagou, D., Abate, A. JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH. 2025: 365-377

    View details for Web of Science ID 001594173500029

  • Updating Robot Safety Representations Online from Natural Language Feedback Santos, L., Li, Z., Peters, L., Bansal, S., Bajcsy, A. edited by Ott, C. IEEE. 2025: 7778-7785

    View details for Web of Science ID 001614845800189

  • System-Level Safety Monitoring and Recovery for Perception Failures in Autonomous Vehicles Chakraborty, K., Feng, Z., Veer, S., Sharma, A., Ivanovic, B., Pavone, M., Bansal, S. edited by Ott, C. IEEE. 2025: 12885-12891

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11128400

    View details for Web of Science ID 001614889900134

  • Exact Imposition of Safety Boundary Conditions in Neural Reachable Tubes Singh, A., Feng, Z., Bansal, S. edited by Ott, C. IEEE. 2025: 5489-5495

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11127972

    View details for Web of Science ID 001582497400498

  • Reachability Analysis for Black-Box Dynamical Systems Chilakamarri, V., Feng, Z., Bansal, S. edited by Ott, C. IEEE. 2025: 3552-3558

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11127528

    View details for Web of Science ID 001582497400319

  • SAFE-GIL: SAFEty Guided Imitation Learning for Robotic Systems Ciftci, Y., Chiu, D., Feng, Z., Sukhatme, G. S., Bansal, S. edited by Ott, C. IEEE. 2025: 3559-3566

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11128298

    View details for Web of Science ID 001582497400320

  • Providing Safety Assurances for Systems With Unknown Dynamics IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS LETTERS Wang, H., Borquez, J., Bansal, S. 2024; 8: 1108-1113

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LCSYS.2024.3408069

    View details for Web of Science ID 001251152400019

  • Verification of Neural Reachable Tubes via Scenario Optimization and Conformal Prediction Lin, A., Bansal, S. edited by Abate, A., Cannon, M., Margellos, K., Papachristodoulou, A. JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH. 2024: 719-731

    View details for Web of Science ID 001347137500056

  • Parameterized Fast and Safe Tracking (FaSTrack) using DeepReach Jeong, H., Gong, Z., Bansal, S., Herbert, S. edited by Abate, A., Cannon, M., Margellos, K., Papachristodoulou, A. JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH. 2024: 1006-1017

    View details for Web of Science ID 001347137500077

  • Cooptimizing Safety and Performance With a Control-Constrained Formulation IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS LETTERS Wang, H., Dhande, A., Bansal, S. 2024; 8: 2739-2744

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LCSYS.2024.3511429

    View details for Web of Science ID 001380652300011

  • Detecting and Mitigating System-Level Anomalies of Vision-Based Controllers Gupta, A., Chakraborty, K., Bansal, O., IEEE IEEE. 2024: 9953-9959

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA57147.2024.10611397

    View details for Web of Science ID 001369728001027

  • On Safety and Liveness Filtering Using Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS Borquez, J., Chakraborty, K., Wang, H., Bansal, S. 2024; 40: 4235-4251

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TRO.2024.3454470

    View details for Web of Science ID 001317680300003

  • Discovering Closed-Loop Failures of Vision-Based Controllers via Reachability Analysis IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Chakraborty, K., Bansal, S. 2023; 8 (5): 2692-2699

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2023.3258719

    View details for Web of Science ID 000960675100005

  • Parameter-Conditioned Reachable Sets for Updating Safety Assurances Online Borquez, J., Nakamura, K., Bansal, S., IEEE IEEE. 2023: 10553-10559

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160554

    View details for Web of Science ID 001048371103038

  • Generating Formal Safety Assurances for High-Dimensional Reachability Lin, A., Bansal, S., IEEE IEEE. 2023: 10525-10531

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160600

    View details for Web of Science ID 001048371103034

  • Online Update of Safety Assurances Using Confidence-Based Predictions Nakamura, K., Bansal, S., IEEE IEEE. 2023: 12765-12771

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160828

    View details for Web of Science ID 001048371104128

  • Computation of Regions of Attraction for Hybrid Limit Cycles Using Reachability: An Application to Walking Robots IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Choi, J. J., Agrawal, A., Sreenath, K., Tomlin, C. J., Bansal, S. 2022; 7 (2): 4504-4511

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2022.3151143

    View details for Web of Science ID 000761228500034

  • FaSTrack:A Modular Framework for Real-Time Motion Planning and Guaranteed Safe Tracking IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL Chen, M., Herbert, S. L., Hu, H., Pu, Y., Fisac, J., Bansal, S., Han, S., Tomlin, C. J. 2021; 66 (12): 5861-5876

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TAC.2021.3059838

    View details for Web of Science ID 000725800500020

  • Provably Safe and Scalable Multivehicle Trajectory Planning IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY Bansal, S., Chen, M., Tanabe, K., Tomlin, C. J. 2021; 29 (6): 2473-2489

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TCST.2020.3042815

    View details for Web of Science ID 000704824600018

  • Visual Navigation Among Humans With Optimal Control as a Supervisor IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Tolani, V., Bansal, S., Faust, A., Tomlin, C. 2021; 6 (2): 2288-2295

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2021.3060638

    View details for Web of Science ID 000631202300003

  • DeepReach: A Deep Learning Approach to High-Dimensional Reachability Bansal, S., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2021: 1817-1824

    View details for DOI 10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561949

    View details for Web of Science ID 000765738801098

  • A Robust Control Framework for Human Motion Prediction IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS Bajcsy, A., Bansal, S., Ratner, E., Tomlin, C. J., Dragan, A. D. 2021; 6 (1): 24-31

    View details for DOI 10.1109/LRA.2020.3028049

    View details for Web of Science ID 000577867400004

  • A Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability-Based Framework for Predicting and Analyzing Human Motion for Safe Planning Bansal, S., Bajcsy, A., Ratner, E., Dragan, A. D., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2020: 7149-7155

    View details for DOI 10.1109/icra40945.2020.9197257

    View details for Web of Science ID 000712319504113

  • Generating Robust Supervision for Learning-Based Visual Navigation Using Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Li, A., Bansal, S., Giovanis, G., Tolani, V., Tomlin, C., Chen, M. edited by Jadbabaie, A., Pappas, G., Parrilo, P. A., Recht, B., Tomlin, C., Zeilinger, M., Bayen, A. M. JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH. 2020: 500-510

    View details for Web of Science ID 001228369100049

  • Robust Sequential Trajectory Planning Under Disturbances and Adversarial Intruder IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY Chen, M., Bansal, S., Fisac, J. F., Tomlin, C. J. 2019; 27 (4): 1566–82

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TCST.2018.2828380

    View details for Web of Science ID 000471717100014

  • Plug-and-Play Model Predictive Control for Load Shaping and Voltage Control in Smart Grids IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID Le Floch, C., Bansal, S., Tomlin, C. J., Moura, S. J., Zeilinger, M. N. 2019; 10 (3): 2334-2344

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TSG.2017.2655461

    View details for Web of Science ID 000466603800001

  • Reachability-Based Safety Guarantees using Efficient Initializations Herbert, S. L., Bansal, S., Ghosh, S., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2019: 4810-4816

    View details for Web of Science ID 000560779004067

  • Closed-loop Model Selection for Kernel-based Models using Bayesian Optimization Beckers, T., Bansal, S., Tomlin, C. J., Hirche, S., IEEE IEEE. 2019: 828-834

    View details for Web of Science ID 000560779000126

  • An Efficient Reachability-Based Framework for Provably Safe Autonomous Navigation in Unknown Environments Bajcsy, A., Bansal, S., Bronstein, E., Tolani, V., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2019: 1758-1765

    View details for Web of Science ID 000560779001110

  • A New Simulation Metric to Determine Safe Environments and Controllers for Systems with Unknown Dynamics Ghosh, S., Bansal, S., Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, A., Seshia, S. A., Tomlin, C., ACM ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2019: 185-196

    View details for DOI 10.1145/3302504.3311795

    View details for Web of Science ID 000516713900020

  • Decomposition of Reachable Sets and Tubes for a Class of Nonlinear Systems IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL Chen, M., Herbert, S. L., Vashishtha, M. S., Bansal, S., Tomlin, C. J. 2018; 63 (11): 3675-3688

    View details for DOI 10.1109/TAC.2018.2797194

    View details for Web of Science ID 000448499500004

  • Safe Sequential Path Planning Under Disturbances and Imperfect Information Bansal, S., Chen, M., Fisac, J. F., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2017: 5550-5555

    View details for Web of Science ID 000427033305100

  • FaSTrack: a Modular Framework for Fast and Guaranteed Safe Motion Planning Herbert, S. L., Chen, M., Han, S., Bansal, S., Fisac, J. F., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2017

    View details for Web of Science ID 000424696901085

  • Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability: A Brief Overview and Recent Advances Bansal, S., Chen, M., Herbert, S., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2017

    View details for Web of Science ID 000424696902029

  • Learning Quadrotor Dynamics Using Neural Network for Flight Control Bansal, S., Akametalu, A. K., Jiang, F. J., Laine, F., Tomlin, C. J., IEEE IEEE. 2016: 4653-4660

    View details for Web of Science ID 000400048104136

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5826-7686