Yashaswini Murthy
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Postdoctoral Scholar Email: ymurthy@caltech.edu |
I will be joining UT Austin (Operations Research & Industrial Engineering) as a tenure-track Assistant Professor starting Fall 2026.
I am recruiting mathematically strong and self motivated graduate students, postdocs, and research interns.
Areas: Reinforcement Learning Theory, Applied Probability, Stochastic Control, Optimization.
If interested in working with me, please email your CV with a short summary of your research interests.
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About
I am currently a postdoc in Caltech, CMS where I work with Prof. Adam Wierman, Prof. Eric Mazumdar and Prof. Laixi Shi.
I received my Ph.D. in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in August 2025. I count myself extremely fortunate to have been, and to continue to be, advised by Prof. R. Srikant. My research interests lie at the intersection of reinforcement learning theory and applied probability. Specifically, my doctoral work has focused on average reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and robust MDPs with risk-sensitive exponential costs, exploring both their theoretical foundations and applications in reinforcement learning.
In the summer of 2024, I completed an academic internship at Georgia Tech, where I focused on countable state space reinforcement learning. During the fall of 2023, I interned at INRIA, Paris, where my research centered on reversible MDPs. Before these experiences, I worked as a research assistant in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UIUC, contributing to projects in differential privacy and game theory.
Before beginning my Ph.D. program, I earned both a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in automation, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, along with a Minor in Systems and Control Engineering. My Master’s thesis centered on the mathematical modeling, control, and motion planning of microrobots in Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, employing methods from nonlinear control, Lie theory, and differential geometric control.
Outside of work, I like photography, running, and reading non fiction, science and historical fiction. I absolutely love traveling and also derive a lot of joy from good food (despite not enjoying the process of making it).