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Siddartha Devic

devic [at] usc.edu

Computer Science Department
University of Southern California

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About

I’m Sid, a CS PhD student in the USC Theory Group, where I am fortunate to be advised by the wonderful Vatsal Sharan and Aleksandra Korolova. I am broadly interested in (1) algorithmic fairness, especially in the presence of uncertainty, finite resources, and ranking / two-sided marketplaces; and (2) theoretical machine learning. I am grateful to have my research supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship.

Here is my CV (Nov. 2023).

I completed my undergraduate degrees in math and CS at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), where I explored research in networking, theory, optimization, and reinforcement learning. Along the way, I was extremely fortunate to be advised by these amazing professors: Nick Ruozzi, Jason Jue, Brendan Juba, and Ben Raichel.

Publications and Preprints

(αβ) indicates alphabetical order, standard in theoretical computer science.

Workshop Papers

Mentorship

Student activities and service

The first year of my PhD, I served as a CS department senator within the USC Viterbi Graduate Student Association (VGSA), where I was able to bring goats to campus (amongst other things).

I served as President / VP for my undergrad’s ACM chapter, where I am most proud to have established a perpetual $30k endowed scholarship with club funds. Importantly, the scholarship may also grant eligible students an in-state tuition waiver! Students can apply here.

I also served as the undergrad representative on the UTD CS department head search committee during the 2020-2021 academic year.

If you are a UTD student interested in pursuing a PhD, you may find the grad school section I wrote of this guide helpful. Also check out this research internship / REU masterlist which I put together. You are welcome to reach out to me anytime for more info and/or if you’d like me to review your GRFP or NDSEG applications!

Fun

In my free time I enjoy climbing/bouldering, surfing, hiking, and skiing (the latter two less frequently!). I have (at some point in the past) also attempted the following: learning art, running, calisthenics progressions, playing classical piano, swimming, and binging npr tiny desk concerts.

Some other stuff from undergrad:

Give, even if you only have a little.

-Siddhartha Gautama