Urmee Maitra

Hello! Thanks for visiting my webpage. I am a fifth year PhD student attached to the Electrical Engineering Department, Indian Insitute of Technology, Kharagpur. I am extremely fortunate to be advised by Prof. Ashish R. Hota. Prior to my graduation, I was attached to the Electrical Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, where I also served as a visiting faculty, after completing my Masters in Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Control Systems.


I am fortunate to have worked in collaboration with great researchers, such as, Prof. Vaibhav Srivastava (Michigan State University), Dr. Saverio Bolognani and Dr. Ezzat Elokda (ETH Zurich), Prof. Philip E. Pare (Purdue University), Prof. Alfred O. Hero (University of Michigan), and Prof. Rohit Gupta (IIT Bombay). Beyond game theory and epidemics in specific (and spreading process in general), I am also interested in exploring new problems relating to safe-control, security breach in cyber-physical systems, and reinforcement-learning based problems. Given that I am in my final year of graduation, I am also searching for Postdoc positions. If you find me an appropriate candidate, I will be happy to discuss further.


Email: urmeemaitra93@kgpian.iitkgp.ac.in

Research Interests

My research area during graduation is focussed primarily on game-theoretic treatments within the framework of epidemiological settings. To address certain research gaps and solve some of the critical problems that arises during a pandemic, I have adopted the following methodologies:


• By modeling forward-looking individuals, and applying Dynamic Population Game Theory, I have characterized the Nash strategies, and obtained the optimal policies for various parameter regimes.


• Due to presence of asymptomatic agents, individuals are unaware of their infection status, resulting in smart phone applications (e.g., Aarogya Setu App) providing noisy information about the state. By posing the information design problem within the lens of Bayesian Persuasion, I have obtained the optimal signaling schemes of the sender that minimize infection level.


• Mutating strains (such as Omicron, Delta etc.) induce high uncertainty in the dynamics of epidemics, and hence arresting infection spread becomes extremely demanding for policy-makers. I am currently investigating the impact of human decision-making on epidemic evolution when the strains undergo mutation processes

Publications/Work in Progress

• SIS Epidemic Propagation under Virus Mutation and Game-Theoretic Protection, U. Maitra, A. R. Hota, and V. Srivastava, Accepted for presentation to IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2025.
• Discrete-time Sequential Persuasive Game for Controlling SIS Epidemic Propagation, U. Maitra, and A. R. Hota, In Submission.
• Bi-Virus SIS Epidemic Propagation under Mutation and Game-theoretic Protection Adoption, U. Maitra, A. R. Hota, and V. Srivastava, In Submission.
• Optimal protection and vaccination against epidemics with reinfection risk, U. Maitra, A. R. Hota, R. Gupta, and A. O. Hero, AIMS Mathematics, 2025.
• Optimal Bayesian persuasion for containing SIS epidemics, U. Maitra, A. R. Hota, and P. E. Pare, IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2024. Also presented at the American Control Conference (ACC), 2025.
• Bayesian persuasion for containing SIS epidemic with asymptomatic infection, A. R. Hota, A. Satapathi, and U. Maitra, Submitted, arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.04182., 2024
• Learning to mitigate epidemic risks: A dynamic population game approach, A. R. Hota, U. Maitra, E. Elokda, and S. Bolognani, Dynamic Games and Applications, 2023.
• SIS Epidemic Propagation under Strategic Non-myopic Protection: A Dynamic Population Game Approach, U. Maitra, A. R. Hota, and V. Srivastava, IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2023. Also presented at the CDC, 2023.

News

• 2025/09 - Selected as Future Digileader to attend Future Digileaders Event, 2025, to be held in Stockholm. See you in Stockholm!
• 2025/09 - Presented our work "Epidemic Propagation under Game-theoretic Non-myopic Strategies and Bayesian Persuasion" at a talk at the Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH Zurich.
• 2025/07 - Our work, "SIS Epidemic Propagation under Virus Mutation and Game-Theoretic Protection", is accepted for presentation to Conference on Decision and Control, 2025. See you in Rio!
• 2025/07 - Presented our work, "Optimal Bayesian persuasion for containing SIS epidemics", at the American Control Conference, 2025, at Sheraton Downtown Denver, USA.
• 2025/06 - Awarded with the Travel Grant by NCCR Automation to attend, and present our work at the Swiss CLOCK Summit, 2025 held in Engelberg. See you in Engelberg!
• 2025/03 - Attended and presented our work at ICTS program on Decisions, Games, and Evolution at ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru, India.

Teaching Experience

During my PhD course, I served as the instructor of the following courses:


• Machine Learning and Signal Processing Laboratory
• Control and Instrumentation Laboratory
• Signals and Networks Laboratory
• Measurements and Electronic Instruments Laboratory
• Electrical Technology Tutorial
• Electrical Technology Laboratory


In addition, during my service as a visiting faculty at Jadavpur University, I was as the instructor of the following courses:


• Theory on Sequential Systems and Microprocessors
• Basic Electrical Engineering Laboratory

Miscellaneous

• Serving as the Finance co-chair to the prestigious IEEE CSS supported NextCom committee.
• Playing chess is one of my favourite passtime. Happy to play a friendly match!