Overview
I study frictions that arise in sociotechnical systems (such as social media platforms, AI chatbots and decentralized protocols) and design interventions. Relevant CS keywords/interests (broadly): security, privacy, algorithmic game theory, social choice theory, decision theory. Relevant non-CS keywords: tech law, ethics, STS.
I'm fortunate to be advised by Dawn Song, and am affiliated with RDI & IC3. In the past, my work has also been funded by the Ethereum Foundation.
I'm physically based in NY at Cornell Tech, where I collaborate with Ari Juels and others.
Collaboration. Please reach out by email if you're a researcher or practitioner working in relevant areas!
I'm particularly interested in hearing from those with expertise in (1) the social sciences and humanities, and/or (2) governance of public goods in practice.
Background.
I have focused on security and protocol/mechanism design since starting my PhD in 2022 (both in research and at my startup). Earlier, 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.
