Our Bureau
Ithaca, NY
Cornell University recently announced the name of Kavita Bala, dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers CIS), as the university’s 17th provost. Bala is appointed for 5 years by the Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees, beginning January 1.
As provost, she will perform as the university’s chief academic officer and budget officer, overseeing academic programs and units of the university, for budgeting and strategic planning, promotion and tenure, academic and research initiatives and supervision of the Ithaca campus.
“Bala has done an outstanding job as dean of Cornell Bowers CIS, shepherding the college’s growth, supporting its diversity, fostering its interdisciplinarity and collaborations and staking Cornell’s leadership in research and innovation,” said Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff.
Bala, an expert in computer vision and graphics, said “It is an incredible honor and privilege to serve as Cornell’s next provost.” Bala added further, “We are living in an age of tremendous and rapid societal change driven by technological innovation. With Cornell’s intellectual breadth, we are positioned to meet both the challenges and the opportunities of our time. As provost, I hope to foster an environment where all Cornellians can realize their intellectual potential, do their best work and have a positive impact on the world.”
“Kavita Bala has been a pioneering leader of Cornell Bowers CIS, a formidable researcher in computer vision and AI, and a confident steward of our efforts to define the role of AI at Cornell,” said Kraig Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Board of Trustees, lauding the efforts of the search committee.
In 2020, Bala became the inaugural dean of Cornell Bowers CIS and led the school through a period of rapid growth. Currently, the college has 2,400 undergraduate majors, and to meet demand, Bala increased the faculty by 30%. She was instrumental in securing funds for a new 135,000 square-foot building, to open in 2025.
Bala has worked as the lead dean of the Cornell AI Initiative and co-chaired a cross-campus task force to create guidelines for the use of generative AI in Cornell classes. Bala has led in increasing access and retention for women and underrepresented minorities. Women now make up 44% of the college’s majors, more than double the national average, and 18% of its majors are from underrepresented groups. Bala spearheaded the Bowers Undergraduate Research Experience (BURE) program to expand access to summer research opportunities for students.
Bala with her doctoral student, co-founded a visual recognition AI company, which IKEA integrated into an augmented reality application. The company was then acquired by Facebook in 2019.
Bala has received many awards such as the 2020 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and she is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and the SIGGRAPH Academy.
Bala earned her bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India, and received her master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She came to Cornell in 1999 as a postdoctoral researcher and became an assistant professor of computer science in 2002.
