On September 25, Cornell announced that Kavita Bala will serve as the next Provost starting January 1, 2025 for a five year term.
Bala will replace John Siliciano ’75, professor of law in Cornell Law School, who has served as interim provost since July 1. Siciliano had previously served as Deputy Provost under Michael Kotlikoff when Kotlikoff was Provost. The vacancy was created by Kotlikoff becoming Acting President on July 1.
Because Kotlikoff will only serve for two academic years, this means that Bala’s service as Provost will span into the first three years of the next President’s administration. Some observers speculate that having a woman Provost may ameliorate some of the pressure that the next Presidential search committee may face to have another female president. (The first 12 presidents in a row were males, and the last two presidential searches made every effort to select female candidates.) Alternatively, Bala’s appointment may position her to be a strong internal candidate for the next President.
Bala’s appointment as Provost was approved by the Cornell Trustee Executive Committee at its September meeting.
Bala is currently dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Thorsten Joachims, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of computer science and information science, will serve as interim dean of Cornell Bowers CIS to fill in for Bala beginning Jan. 1.
Bala was born in India. Bala received her Ph.D. from MIT in 1999. She then did a postdoc in computer graphics under Prof. Donald P. Greenberg ‘55. Bala joined the Computer Science faculty in 2002, and was department chair in 2018-2020.
A Cornell press release quotes Kraig Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Board of Trustees. “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. She will be an excellent provost and champion of our impact across disciplines. My thanks to the search committee for their hard work.”
“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.”
Bala’s academic lineage through Don Greenberg is rich in cross-discipline collaboration. Greenberg started as a joint appointment between AAP and the Engineering College, and his computer graphics course is cross-listed by four different colleges.
