Curriculum Vitae
Sambit Mishra
PhD Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering · University of Southern California · Advised by Prof. Urbashi Mitra.
§ 01
Research focus
Causal inference and probabilistic graphical models, with emphasis on scalable continuous-optimization methods for causal discovery in high-dimensional data. Focused on reliable structure learning under distribution shift, with applications to fraud detection and decision systems.
§ 02
Education
Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Aug 2025 — PresentUniversity of Southern California (USC) · Los Angeles, CA, USA
- ▹Advisor: Prof. Urbashi Mitra, Ming Hsieh Department of ECE
- ▹GPA: 4.00/4.00
- ▹Coursework: Probability Theory (EE 503, A), Linear Algebra (EE 510, A), Supervised Machine Learning (EE 559, ongoing), Inference & Estimation Theory (EE 563, ongoing).
B.Tech. (Hons.), Electronics and Communication Engineering
2021 — 2025Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar · Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
- ▹Advisor: Dr. Soumya P. Dash
- ▹GPA: 9.14/10.00
§ 03
Research experience
Graduate Research Assistant
Aug 2025 — PresentMing Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, USC · Los Angeles, CA, USA
- ▹Developing continuous-optimization methods for scalable DAG estimation using differentiable acyclicity constraints, reducing iterations and enabling large-scale batching.
- ▹Designed a soft-intervention selection framework that improves causal-discovery efficiency and lowers experimental cost.
- ▹Studying identifiability of causal graphs under finite samples and latent-variable settings.
- ▹Built GPU-accelerated structure-learning pipelines in PyTorch using Adam and L-BFGS for non-convex optimization.
Undergraduate Researcher
Aug 2024 — May 2025School of Electrical and Computer Sciences, IIT Bhubaneswar · Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
- ▹Developed SER-optimized modulation schemes for RIS-assisted non-coherent communication systems.
- ▹Conducted error analysis for multi-level ASK modulations, optimizing energy efficiency.
§ 04
Publications
- [1]
C. Peng, S. Mishra, U. Mitra
“Learning to Intervene: Optimized Soft Intervention Selection for Causal Discovery.”
IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), accepted, 2026.
- [2]
S. Mishra, S. P. Dash, G. C. Alexandropoulos
“SER-Optimized Multi-Level ASK Modulations for RIS-Assisted Communications With Energy- and Sign-Based Noncoherent Reception.”
IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, vol. 10, pp. 1433–1445, 2026.
doi: 10.1109/TGCN.2025.3633182 - [3]
S. Mishra, S. P. Dash
“Error Analysis With Optimal Receiver and Multi-Level ASK for RIS-Assisted Noncoherent Wireless System.”
IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 15, pp. 300–304, 2026.
doi: 10.1109/LWC.2025.3624154
§ 05
Industry experience
ASIC Engineering Intern, CHI VIP Team
May 2024 — Jul 2024NVIDIA Corporation · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
- ▹Verified CHI protocol compliance for CPU/GPU IPs using SystemVerilog and Perl automation.
- ▹Ensured interoperability between internal and external verification IPs.
§ 06
Awards & academic distinctions
- ★All India Rank 4000 among ~1,000,000 candidates in JEE Advanced 2021, India.
- ★National Talent Search Scholarship — Top 2000 students of ~1,200,000 candidates in NTSE 2019, Government of India.
- ★Qualified Regional Mathematical Olympiad (RMO) 2019; selected participant, Indian National Mathematical Olympiad (INMO) 2020.
§ 07
Technical skills
Causal Inference
- Causal Discovery
- Bayesian Networks
- Structural Equation Models
Optimization
- Adam
- RMSProp
- L-BFGS
- Convex Optimization
- Bilevel Optimization
Programming & Tools
- Python
- PyTorch
- NumPy
- SciPy
- C++
- CUDA
- MATLAB
- Git
- LaTeX
§ 08
Positions of responsibility
General Secretary
May 2023 — May 2024Science and Technology Council, Students’ Gymkhana, IIT Bhubaneswar
- ▹Coordinated and managed five technical societies and two fests, ensuring proper allocation of funds among them.
- ▹Led IIT Bhubaneswar’s Inter-IIT Tech Meet 2023 team, achieving an overall 10th rank among 23 IITs.