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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 The Ohio State University. Dr. Mitra is currently the Gordon S. Marshall Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California with appointments in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science. She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-scale Communications. She was or is a member of the IEEE Information Theory Society’s Board of Governors (2002-2007, 2012-2017), the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Technical Committee on Signal Processing for Communications and Networks (2012-2017), the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Awards Board (2017- 2018), and the Chair/Vice Chair of the IEEE Communications Society, Communication Theory Technical Committee (2019-2020/2017-2018). Dr. Mitra is a Fellow of the IEEE. She is the recipient of: 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, 2016 IEEE Communications Society Women in Communications Engineering Mentoring Award, 2015-2016 IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, 2012 Globecom Signal Processing for Communications Symposium Best Paper Award, 2012 US National Academy of Engineering Lillian Gilbreth Lectureship, Student Best Paper Award, as co-advisor, at the International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications, Bangalore India 2012, 2011 USC Zumberge Interdisciplinary Innovation Fund (with M. El-Naggar), USC Center for Excellence in Research Fellowship (2010-2013), the Viterbi School of Engineering Dean’s Faculty Service Award (2009), a USC Remarkable Woman Award (2009), USC Mellon Mentoring Award (2008), the 2009 DCOSS Applications & Systems Best Paper Award, Texas Instruments Visiting Professor (Fall 2002, Rice University), 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. She has been an Associate Editor for the following IEEE publications: Transactions on Signal Processing, Transactions on Information Theory, Journal of Oceanic Engineering, and Transactions on Communications. She has co-chaired: (technical program) 2019 IEEE Communication Theory Workshop, Sefloss Iceland, 2018 SPAWC, Kalamata Greece, technical area chair for Communications at the 2017 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory in Honolulu, HI, 2014 IEEE Information Theory Workshop in Hobart, Tasmania, IEEE 2012 International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications, Bangalore India, and the IEEE Communication Theory Symposium at ICC 2003 in Anchorage, AK; and general co-chair for the first ACM Workshop on Underwater Networks at Mobicom 2006, Los Angeles, CA. Dr. Mitra has held visiting appointments at: King’s College, London, Imperial College, the Delft University of Technology, Stanford University, Rice University, and the Eur écom Institute. She served as co-Director of the Communication Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California from 2004-2007 and currently serves in that position as well. Her research interests are in: wireless communications, communication and sensor networks, biological communication systems, detection and estimation and the interface of communication, sensing and control.