Exploiting Statistical Hardness for Increased Privacy in Wireless Systems
Urbashi Mitra, University of Southern California
11-12 17th Nov 2025
Abstract
In an era defined by the Internet of Things, securing signals from unintended eavesdroppers has never been more critical. In this lecture, Professor Mitra will share her latest research on leveraging statistical hardness to enhance privacy in wireless systems - exploring how the very challenges in learning and signal processing can be used to strengthen communication security. Drawing from compressed sensing, structured noise, and block-sparsity, she demonstrates how modest shared secrets can protect both private communication and localization, backed by strong theoretical guarantees and validated through practical results.
Short Bio
Urbashi Mitra received the B.S. and the M.S. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She began her academic career at Ohio State University.
Dr. Mitra is currently the Gordon S. Marshall Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California with appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Mitra is a Fellow of the IEEE, a foreign member of the Academia Europaea and a member of the USC chapter of Phi Kappa Phi. She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-scale Communications as well as multiple Associate editorships for IEEE transactions. She is active in service for the following IEEE societies: Signal Processing, Communications and Information Theory. She is the recipient of: the 2025 Princeton ECE Department Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award, the 2024 IEEE Information Theory Society Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award, the 2021 USC Viterbi School of Engineering Senior Research Award, the 2017 IEEE Communications Society Women in Communications Engineering Technical Achievement Award, a 2016 UK Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Professorship, a 2016 US Fulbright Scholar Award, a 2016-2017 UK Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship, IEEE Communications Society (2015-2016) and Signal Processing Society (2024-2025) Distinguished Lectureships, 2012 Globecom Signal Processing for Communications Symposium Best Paper Award, 2012 US National Academy of Engineering Lillian Gilbreth Lectureship, the 2009 DCOSS Applications & Systems Best Paper Award, 2002 Texas Instruments Visiting Professor, 2001 Okawa Foundation Award, 2000 OSU College of Engineering Lumley Award for Research, 1997 OSU College of Engineering MacQuigg Award for Teaching, and a 1996 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Dr. Mitra has held visiting appointments at: King’s College, London, Imperial College, the Delft University of Technology, Stanford University, Rice University, and the Eurecom Institute.
Her research interests are in: model-based machine learning, wireless communications, communication and sensor networks, biological communication systems, detection and estimation and the interface of communication, sensing and control.