Overview
I study friction between humans and algorithmic systems, broadly. I'm interested in settings that involve forms of cooperation or competition between agents, e.g. social media platforms, AI chatbots and decentralized protocols. Some relevant keywords: decision theory, causal reasoning, algorithmic game theory, social choice, ethics, tech law.
I'm fortunate to be advised by Dawn Song, and am affiliated with RDI & IC3. Previously, my work has also been supported by the Ethereum Foundation.
I'm physically based in NY at Cornell Tech, where I collaborate with Ari Juels and others.
Background.
I started my PhD in 2022, focusing primarily on security and privacy. I have been on leave working on a startup since 2023, but will be returning in 2026. Earlier in my career, I designed and built distributed systems for machine learning applications at the AMPLab/RISELab.
Outside work. Avid reader, boxer (cal boxing '18), photog.
Warriors basketball fan. Urban policy enthusiast. I also occassionally help some friends run an Indian food popup in New Yorkâyou can help by following @dononyc!
Publications
Specular: Towards Secure, Trust-minimized Optimistic Blockchain Execution
Zhe Ye*, Ujval Misra*, Jiajun Cheng, Wenyang Zhou, Dawn Song. IEEE S&P 2023.
Elastic Hyperparameter Tuning on the Cloud
Lisa Dunlap, Kirthevasan Kandasamy, Ujval Misra, Richard Liaw, Michael Jordan, Ion Stoica, Joseph E. Gonzalez. SoCC 2021.
RubberBand: Cloud-based Hyperparameter Tuning
Ujval Misra*, Richard Liaw*, Lisa Dunlap, Romil Bhardwaj, Kirthevasan Kandasamy, Joseph E. Gonzalez, Ion Stoica, Alexey Tumanov. EuroSys 2021.
Lineage Stash: Fault-tolerance Off the Critical Path
Stephanie Wang, John Liagouris, Robert Nishihara, Philipp Moritz, Ujval Misra, Alexey Tumanov, Ion Stoica. SOSP 2019.
Preprints
PROF: Protected Order Flow in a Profit-Seeking World
Kushal Babel, Nerla Jean-Louis, Yan Ji, Ujval Misra, Mahimna Kelkar, Kosala Yapa Mudiyanselage, Andrew Miller, Ari Juels. arXiv preprint 2024.
C5t5: Controllable Generation of Organic Molecules with Transformers
Daniel Rothchild, Alex Tamkin, Julie Yu, Ujval Misra, Joseph Gonzalez. arXiv preprint 2021.
