Overview
I study the role that trustworthy computation can and should play in organizing a more free, just and equitable society.
To this end, I'm currently exploring how tools from particular areas in CS and economics—such as
algorithmic game theory,
secure hardware, and
cryptography—can be practically leveraged to cultivate trust, redistribute power and improve the functioning of democratically governed organizations/institutions.
I've also lately been thinking about how to ground this work more formally in (virtue) ethics.
I'm fortunate to be advised by Dawn Song, and am affiliated with RDI & IC3. My work has also been funded by the Ethereum Foundation.
I'm physically based in NY at Cornell Tech, where I collaborate closely 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 in practice (nonprofits, cooperatives, unions, DAOs etc).
Happy to talk, collaborate and/or extend resources from my network in support of aligned causes.
Background.
I've spent several years wandering through various areas of research (in search for purpose), which perhaps explains why my google scholar looks like a random walk.
Prior to my anti-technooptimist shift into security and privacy, I worked on building distributed systems for data-intensive and ML applications at the AMPLab/RISELab. Since then, my last two years have focused on studying and designing decentralized protocols for blockchain-based finance (both in research and at my startup). Most recently, I've been thinking about the role of trustworthy computation in online deliberation and digital governance.
Outside work. avid reader, boxer (cal boxing '18), photog.
warriors basketball fan. housing/transit policy enthusiast. I also occassionally help some friends run a local Indian food popup—you can help by following @curryinahurrynyc!
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.
