Sambit Mishra

Teaching

The work of thinking, made visible.

Teaching is, for me, the other half of doing research. Communicating ideas to students forces precision in a way that solitary work does not — and watching someone build their own intuition is among the most satisfying parts of academic life.

§ 01

Principles.

  1. 01
    From intuition to formalism
    Start where the student is. The cleanest definition is rarely the right entry point — analogies, sketches, and worked examples open the door, then formalism is what you walk through.
  2. 02
    Show the moving parts
    Engineering and inference both reward seeing how a system moves. I lean on simulation, visualization, and live derivations rather than finished slides — the work of thinking is the lesson.
  3. 03
    Equity of attention
    Office hours and feedback should not be a privilege of the loudest. I try to make space for quiet questions and to follow up with students who haven’t spoken in class.

§ 02

Mentorship & service.

General Secretary

May 2023 — May 2024

Science & Technology Council, Students’ Gymkhana, IIT Bhubaneswar

  • ▹Coordinated five technical societies and two campus fests, allocating funds and coaching society heads through their first events as student leaders.
  • ▹Led IIT Bhubaneswar’s contingent at Inter-IIT Tech Meet 2023, placing 10th overall among 23 IITs.
  • ▹The role taught me that a good lecturer and a good organizer share the same instinct: anticipate where someone is going to get stuck, and clear the path before they get there.

Peer mentorship

Ongoing

Informal mentorship for undergraduates and incoming graduate students

I help students navigate research onboarding, paper reading, and the transition from problem-set thinking to open-ended research questions. If you’re an undergraduate considering a PhD in causal inference or signal processing, drop me a note.

§ 03

Currently.

At USC I’m completing graduate coursework that informs my research and the topics I most enjoy explaining to others.

  • EE 503

    Probability Theory

    Fall 2025 · A

  • EE 510

    Linear Algebra

    Fall 2025 · A

  • EE 559

    Supervised Machine Learning

    Spring 2026

  • EE 563

    Inference & Estimation Theory

    Spring 2026

This page will be updated as I take on TA assignments and course development at USC.