Draft:Abhilash Mishra

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Abhilash Mishra (born July 1987) is an Indian-American scientist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and chief science officer of Equitech Futures, a talent incubator and applied research lab that supports emerging innovators who want to use tech for social impact.[1] He is also the founding director of the Kevin Xu Initiative on Technology and Global Development at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. [2][3]

Early life and education[edit]

Mishra was born in Rourkela and grew up in Sambalpur, India. Both his parents taught economics. As an undergraduate, Mishra studied physics at Fergusson College, Pune where he won the prestigious Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojna (KVPY) award from the Government of India in 2005.[4] He was recognized as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader in 2007. [5]

In 2008, he was among the five students awarded the Rhodes Scholarship from India[6]. As a Rhodes Scholar, he studied Physics at Merton College, Oxford. In 2017, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology. His thesis proposed a novel method to detect gravitational waves from the early universe and developed data science tools for the Long Wavelength Array.[7]

Career[edit]

Abhilash founded Science for All (2011-2019), a nonprofit that ran the Science Education Initiative fellowship, India's first teacher-residency for STEM undergraduates.[8] He also worked with the Department of Science and Technology in the Government of Odisha to establish the Rural Mathematics Talent Search Program, that supported mathematically gifted students from rural areas of Odisha through summer training camps and scholarships.[9] In 2017, Abhilash received the Clinton Global Initiative University Distinguished Alumni award for his work on promoting global equity in STEM education.

In 2018, Abhilash joined the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago as the founding director of the Kevin Xu Initiative on Science, Technology, and Global Development. There he has led an interdisciplinary research program on technology and public policy.

In a 2021 paper, he argued how data quality can distort audits of AI systems.[10] Along with his students and collaborators, he led the development of an open data platform for carbon emissions data from NASA’s OCO-2 satellite.[11] In an op-ed published in Science magazine with Aaron Mertz at the Science and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, he proposed the establishment of an American Science Corps that would send recent PhDs across the US to build trust in science and support technical upskilling.[12] [13]

In 2021, Abhilash founded Equitech Futures, a talent incubator and research lab for supporting emerging innovators worldwide through virtual institutes, research fellowships, and entrepreneurship training. Alumni from the program have been accepted to Ph.D. and predoc programs at Oxford, MIT, and the University of Chicago.[14] [15] [16] Equitech Futures has partnered with the Rhodes Trust to offer the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society to gather leading practitioners at this intersection.[17]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Equitech Futures, https://www.equitechfutures.com/
  2. ^ "Abhilash Mishra | the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy". 28 September 2023.
  3. ^ "University of Chicago -The Kevin Xu Global Initiative". Xu Foundation. 27 October 2023.
  4. ^ "Ernet.in".
  5. ^ "Abhilash Mishra | the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy". University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. 28 September 2023.
  6. ^ "EquiTech Futures". YouTube.
  7. ^ Mishra, Abhilash (2018). The Low-Frequency Frontier: Cosmology with Future 21cm Experiments (phd). California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/Z9W37TJ2.
  8. ^ Watwani, Jigyasa (25 February 2016). "Science for All campaign eyes pan-India presence". Down to Earth.
  9. ^ Report on the Activities of Science & Technology Department for the year 2010-2011 (State Council on Science & Technology, Odisha) https://st.odisha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2020-02/Annual_Activity_Report_2010_11.pdf
  10. ^ Mishra, Abhilash; Gorana, Yash (2021). "Who Decides if AI is Fair? The Labels Problem in Algorithmic Auditing". arXiv:2111.08723 [cs.CL].
  11. ^ Jain, Raunaq; Odhiambo, Mitchell; Kaushal, Nikita; Mishra, Abhilash; Gorana, Yash (22 February 2023). "Measuring the Carbon Footprint from Wildfires and Crop Burning Using Satellite Data". Egu General Assembly Conference Abstracts. Bibcode:2023EGUGA..2515493J. doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu23-15493.
  12. ^ "Science & Society | Aspen Institute". Aspen Institute. 27 October 2023.
  13. ^ Mertz, Aaron F.; Mishra, Abhilash (2021). "Science's new frontier". Science. 371 (6533): 967. Bibcode:2021Sci...371..967M. doi:10.1126/science.abh3185. PMID 33674469. S2CID 232124665.
  14. ^ Thompson, Abby (27 March 2023). "Equitech Scholar wins prestigious Clarendon Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford". Equitech Futures. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  15. ^ Thompson, Abby (21 June 2023). "Malawian Scholar headed to MIT following pre-doctoral research on voter fraud and misinformation". Equitech Futures. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  16. ^ "Scholars: Apollinaire Abi". Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  17. ^ "Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society". Rhodes Trust. Retrieved November 19, 2023.
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