Kavita Bala is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department and Program of Computer Graphics at Cornell University. Before Cornell, she received her S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Bombay).
Bala specializes in interactive computer graphics, leading research projects in scalable rendering, interactive global illumination, feature-based graphics, perceptually-based rendering, and image-based texturing. She has co-authored the graduate-level textbook "Advanced Global Illumination" (A K Peters publisher, second edition). Bala has served on numerous program committees including SIGGRAPH, the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, Interactive 3D Graphics, Point-Based Symposium, Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing, and Graphics Interface among others. In 2005, she co-chaired the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR).
Bala has received the NSF CAREER award, Cornell College of Engineering James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Affinito-Stewart award.