Overview
I study the behavior of algorithmic systems as they interact with people and institutions, both in theory and in practice. Much of my current work focuses on understanding what causes these systems to fail — and who is accountable when they do. More broadly, I'm drawn to questions that reach into the social sciences, policy, law and (dare I say) philosophy.
I'm advised by Dawn Song, and am affiliated with RDI & IC3. I'm physically based in New York, where I spend time with DLI at Cornell Tech. My work has previously been supported by the Ethereum Foundation.
Background.
I started my PhD in 2022, focusing primarily on analyzing and building secure, privacy-preserving systems. I have been on leave working on a startup since 2023, but will be returning to grad school at some point in the near future. Earlier in my career, I worked on distributed systems for machine learning applications at the AMPLab/RISELab with Ion Stoica and Joey Gonzalez.
Outside work. Avid reader, boxer (cal boxing '18), photog. Basketball fan. Urban policy enthusiast. Sometimes I help friends with an Indian food popup (follow @dononyc).
Publications
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. IEEE S&P 2026.
Specular: Towards Secure, Trust-minimized Optimistic Blockchain Execution
Zhe Ye*, Ujval Misra*, Jiajun Cheng, Wenyang Zhou, Dawn Song. IEEE S&P 2024.
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
C5t5: Controllable Generation of Organic Molecules with Transformers
Daniel Rothchild, Alex Tamkin, Julie Yu, Ujval Misra, Joseph Gonzalez. arXiv preprint 2021.
