M.Sc. in Machine Learning · MBZUAI

Causal inference researcher.

I study the foundations of causal inference, causal representation learning and discovery, and robust and generalizable artificial intelligence.

My current work spans causal mediation, joint counterfactual evaluation, and object-centric structured world models.

Research identity

Learning systems that reason about causes.

I am interested in methods that expose causal structure and remain reliable under interventions, partial information, distribution shifts, and changing environments.

1

Causal mediation and adaptive experiments

I study path-specific causal effects and adaptive treatment allocation, including fixed-confidence identification of interventions that maximize natural direct outcomes.

Mediation Natural direct effects Best-arm identification
2

Joint counterfactuals from partial dependence

I work on evaluating otherwise unidentified joint counterfactual functionals when only marginal distributions and edgewise correlations are available.

Counterfactuals Partial identification Dependence constraints
3

Object-Centric Sparse Transition Representations for World Models

I develop object-centric latent representations with sparse transition dependencies for modular and generalizable models of structured dynamics.

Causal Representation Learning Causal Discovery World models
Selected work

Recent papers.

These papers represent my current work across causal inference, counterfactual reasoning, and representation learning for long-form video understanding.

Under review · Submitted to AAAI 2027

Evaluating Joint Counterfactual Functionals from Marginal Distributions and Edgewise Correlations

Naoya Hashimoto, Harsh Shrivastava, Yuta Kawakami, and Jin Tian.

We study how partial dependence information can constrain joint counterfactual quantities when the complete joint counterfactual distribution is unavailable.

ECCV 2026 · To appear

MoVA: Learning Asymmetric Dual Projections for Modular Long Video-Text Alignment

Peiyuan Zhu, Shaoan Xie, Zijian Li, Yifan Shen, Namrata Deka, Harsh Shrivastava, Guangyi Chen, and Kun Zhang.

This work develops asymmetric dual projections for modular alignment between long-form video representations and text.

Current home

Where I am now.

I am pursuing an M.Sc. in Machine Learning at MBZUAI, with research spanning causal inference, structured representations, and robust AI.

Aug 2025 – Present

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

M.Sc. in Machine Learning, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Current CGPA: 3.61/4.00.

Research interests

Foundations, representations, and generalization

Foundations of Causal Inference Causal Representation Learning Causal Discovery Robust and Generalizable AI
Writing

Latest research notes.

I write long-form notes in Overleaf and publish the final versions here as PDFs, with short abstracts and topic tags for quick browsing.

Backstage

Earlier work, kept compact.

These research and industry experiences shaped my approach to machine learning, but the current focus of this website is my academic work in causality.

Prior audio and multimodal ML
  • AAAI 2021: audio tagging through multi- to single-modal teacher-student mutual learning.
  • ICASSP 2020: multi-task graph convolutional networks for noisy-label audio tagging.
  • ACM Multimedia 2019: weakly labeled audio tagging with multi-level feature fusion.
  • IEEE BigMM 2019: FaceFetch, a human-in-the-loop face-retrieval system.
Industry data science
  • Ecom Express: sequential prediction for logistics planning and delivery-time estimation.
  • Farfetch: contextual recommendation and ranking for product search and discovery.
  • Flipkart: learning-to-rank and multi-objective autosuggestion systems.
  • CARS24: pricing and demand prediction for an online automotive marketplace.
Technical toolkit
  • Programming: Python, SQL, and PySpark.
  • ML: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, and scikit-learn.
  • Scientific computing: NumPy and Pandas.
  • Tools and cloud: Git, Docker, GCP, AWS, and Azure.
Contact

Let’s talk research.

I am happy to discuss causal inference, causal representation learning, causal discovery, structured world models, and related research collaborations.

harsh.vardhan.shri@gmail.com