Kavita Bala, the dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers CIS), has been appointed as Cornell University’s 17th provost. Interim President Michael I.
Kotlikoff announced Bala’s appointment on September 25, which was approved by the Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees. Bala’s five-year term is set to begin on January 1, 2025. Kotlikoff praised Bala’s outstanding performance as the dean of Cornell Bowers CIS, highlighting her role in the college’s growth, diversity support, interdisciplinary collaborations, and Cornell’s leadership in research and innovation.
He expressed confidence in Bala’s ability to bring her 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, a professor of law at Cornell Law School, who has been serving as interim provost since July 1. Kotlikoff previously held the provost position from 2015 until stepping down in July to serve as interim president following President Martha E.
Pollack’s retirement announcement. Expressing her enthusiasm for the new role, Bala stated, “It is an incredible honor and privilege to serve as Cornell’s next provost. 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.”
The provost, as the university’s chief academic officer and budget officer, oversees nearly all academic programs and units of the university. The role involves strategic planning, budgeting, tenure and promotion, academic and research initiatives, and general academic supervision of the Ithaca campus.
Kavita Bala becomes new Cornell provost
The provost is responsible for maintaining and enhancing excellence in teaching, scholarship, and outreach. Kraig Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Board of Trustees, commended Bala’s pioneering leadership at Cornell Bowers CIS, her research in computer vision and AI, and her role in defining AI’s role at Cornell.
He expressed confidence in her ability to be an excellent provost and champion of the university’s impact across disciplines. During her tenure as dean of Cornell Bowers CIS, Bala led the school through a period of rapid growth driven by student interest and the college’s mission to benefit society. Under her leadership, the college has grown to 2,400 undergraduate majors, with three-quarters of Cornell students taking at least one of its classes.
To accommodate this growth, Bala increased the faculty by 30%, recruited from a highly competitive market, and created an internal infrastructure through the appointment of inaugural associate deans. She also secured funds for a new 135,000 square-foot building, scheduled to open in 2025, which will provide new labs, experiential learning opportunities for students, and space for the growing faculty. Bala’s contributions to the fields of computer graphics and computer vision have been foundational, including her work on rendering computer-generated images, representing and modeling complex materials, and visual discovery in satellite images and large photo collections.
She co-founded GrokStyle, a visual recognition AI company that was later acquired by Facebook in 2019. Bala has received numerous awards and recognitions for her work, including the 2020 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and fellowships from the Association for Computing Machinery and the SIGGRAPH Academy. She has also been recognized for her teaching excellence with awards from Cornell Engineering.
Bala earned her bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined Cornell in 1999 as a postdoctoral researcher and became an assistant professor of computer science in 2002. Looking forward to her new role, Bala said, “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. I look forward to supporting Cornell’s vast breadth of disciplines and public engagement.”
