Kavita Bala, dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers CIS), has been named the university’s 17th provost, Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff announced Sept. 25. 

Bala’s five-year appointment, approved by the Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees, will begin Jan. 1.

“Kavita 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,” Kotlikoff said. “She’ll now bring her copious talents – as a researcher, entrepreneur, teacher, visionary leader and administrator – to the entire university.”

Bala, an expert in computer vision and graphics, will succeed John Siliciano ’75, professor of law in Cornell Law School, who has served as interim provost since July 1. Prior to Siliciano, Kotlikoff held the position since 2015. He left the post in July to serve as interim president, after President Martha E. Pollack announced her retirement.

“It is an incredible honor and privilege to serve as Cornell’s next provost,” Bala said. “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 opportunity 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.”

The provost is the university’s chief academic officer and budget officer, overseeing nearly all academic programs and units of the university. Falling under the provost’s purview are: strategic planning and budgeting, tenure and promotion, academic and research initiatives and general academic supervision of the Ithaca campus. The provost is tasked with maintaining, assessing and enhancing excellence in teaching, scholarship and outreach.

“My 25 years at Cornell have shown me that our excellent faculty and staff are fully committed to educating future generations and to fostering open inquiry and creativity,” Bala said. “I look forward to bringing together scholars and students from colleges and units across Cornell’s campuses to pursue discovery and innovation, and to solve the big challenges we face today.”

“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. “She will be an excellent provost and champion of our impact across disciplines. My thanks to the search committee for their hard work.”

In an email announcement, Kotlikoff thanked Siliciano for his leadership during the transition. Thorsten Joachims, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of computer science and information science, will serve as interim dean of Cornell Bowers CIS.

In 2020, Bala helped secure the gift to name Cornell Bowers CIS and became its inaugural dean. She then led the school through a period of rapid growth, driven both by student interest and the college’s mission to benefit society. Currently the college has 2,400 undergraduate majors, and three-quarters of Cornell students take at least one of its classes. To meet demand, Bala increased the faculty by 30%, recruiting from a highly competitive market, and created an internal infrastructure through the appointment of inaugural associate deans. She worked to secure funds for a new 135,000 square-foot building, to open in 2025, that will allow for new labs, experiential learning opportunities for students and space for the growing faculty. 

Bala serves as the lead dean of the Cornell AI Initiative, which has supported the AI Radical Collaboration, created minors in AI and AI in Society (to launch in 2025), and established the NewYork Presbyterian–Cornell Cardiovascular AI Initiative and the Schmidt AI for Science postdoctoral program. Bala also co-chaired a cross-campus task force to create guidelines for the use of generative AI in Cornell classes.

Increasing access and retention for women and underrepresented minorities has also been a priority. 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 also helped establish the Bowers Undergraduate Research Experience (BURE) program to expand access to summer research opportunities for students.

Bala has made foundational contributions to the fields of computer graphics and computer vision, including in the rendering of computer-generated images, representing and modeling complex materials and visual discovery in satellite images and large photo collections. With her doctoral student, she co-founded GrokStyle, a visual recognition AI company, which IKEA integrated into an augmented reality application. The company was then acquired by Facebook in 2019. The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City featured her work on 3D mandalas in 2008.

Bala is the recipient of the 2020 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and the SIGGRAPH Academy. Her teaching awards include Cornell Engineering’s Fiona Li and Donald Li Excellence in Teaching Award (2015) and James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award (2006 and 2009).

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.

“I’ve been a Cornellian starting as a postdoctoral researcher, through tenure-track, then chair, dean and now provost. We have a culture of collaborating and learning from each other that is truly unique and special,” Bala said. “I look forward to supporting Cornell’s vast breadth of disciplines and public engagement.”