Kavita Bala (original) (raw)

Publications

Mandala Project

Bio

Students

PhD

Lekha Revankar (PhD)
Rajeev Datta (PhD)

Utkarsh Mall(2023)
Hubert Lin (2022)
Fujun Luan (2021) Paul Upchurch (2018)
Scott Wehrwein (2018)
Pramook Khungurn (2017)
Sean Bell (2016)
Kevin Matzen (2016)
Kyle Wilson (2016)
Ivaylo Boyadzhiev (2015)
Shuang Zhao (2014)
Daniel Cabrini Hauagge (2014)
Miloŝ Haŝan (2009)
Adam Arbree (2009)
Ganesh Ramanarayanan (2008)

MS

Funding

National Science Foundation
Google, Microsoft

Research Interests:

My research interests span computer vision, computer graphics, and human perception, including:

Education

Awards and Recognition

Recent Publications

<class="paperlist">Complete List of Publications...</class="paperlist">

Broad Audience Talks

Press

Professional Activities

Courses

Books
Phil Dutre, Kavita Bala, Philippe Bekaert. Advanced Global Illumination A K Peters, 2nd Edition August 2006, Natick, MA Bibtex
Editors: Kavita Bala and Phil Dutre. Rendering Techniques 2005 Springer Verlag June 2005, Konstanz, Germany
Phil Dutre, Philippe Bekaert, and Kavita Bala. Advanced Global Illumination A K Peters, 1st Edition July 2003, Natick, MA Bibtex
Patents
Inventors: Kavita Bala, Fujun Luan, Shuang Zhao. Image rendering utlizing procedural yarn models Patent No. 10,410,380 Sep 10, 2019
Inventors: Ivaylo Boyadzhiev, Kavita Bala, Sylvain Paris. Systems and Methods for Computational Lighting Patent No. 9,483,815 B2 Nov 1 2016
Complete Publication List
Utkarsh Mall, Cheng Perng Phoo, Mia Chiquier, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala, Carl Vondrick. DiSciPLE: Learning Interpretable Programs for Scientific Visual Discovery CVPR '25 Paper, project page
Shreelekha Revankar, Cheng Perng Phoo, Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Scale-Aware Recognition in Satellite Images under Resource Constraints ICLR '25 Paper, project page
Hangyu Zhou, Chia-Hsiang Kao, Cheng Perng Phoo, Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. AllClear: A Comprehensive Dataset and Benchmark for Cloud Removal in Satellite Imagery NeurIPS '25 (Track on Datasets and Benchmarks) Paper, project page
Utkarsh Mall, Cheng Perng Phoo, Meilin Kelsey Liu, Carl Vondrick, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Remote Sensing Vision-Language Foundation Models without Annotations via Ground Remote Alignment ICLR '24 Paper, project page
Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Change-Aware Sampling and Contrastive Learning for Satellite Images CVPR '23 Paper, project page
Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Change Event Dataset for Discovery from Spatio-temporal Remote Sensing Imagery NeurIPS 2022, Datasets and Benchmarks Track Paper, supplementary material
Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Zero-shot Learning Using Multimodal Descriptions CVPR L3D-IVU Workshop, 2022 Paper, supplementary material
Xi Deng, Fujun Luan, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Steve Marschner. Reconstructing Translucent Objects using Differentiable Rendering SIGGRAPH 2022 Paper, supplementary material
Utkarsh Mall, Kavita Bala, Tamara Berg, Kristen Grauman. Discovering Underground Maps from Fashion WACV 2022
Utkarsh Mall, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala. Field-Guide Inspired Zero-Shot Learning ICCV 2021 Project
Hadi AlZayer, Hubert Lin, Kavita Bala. AutoPhoto: Aesthetic Photo Capture using Reinforcement Learning IROS 2021 Project
Mitchell J.P. van Zuijlen, Hubert Lin, Kavita Bala, Sylvia C. Pont, Maarten W.A. Wijntjes. Materials In Paintings (MIP): An interdisciplinary dataset for perception, art history, and computer vision PLOS 2021 Project, Dataset
Fujun Luan, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala, Zhao Dong. Unified Shape and SVBRDF Recovery using Differentiable Monte Carlo Rendering EGSR 2021 Project
Kai Zhang*, Fujun Luan*, Qianqian Wang, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely. PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting CVPR 2021 Project
Hubert Lin, Mitchell van Zuijlen, Sylvia C. Pont, Maarten W.A. Wijntjes, Kavita Bala. What can Style Transfer and Paintings do for Model Robustness CVPR 2021
Jang Hyun Cho, Utkarsh Mall, Kavita Bala, Bharath Hariharan. PiCIE: Unsupervised Semantic Segmentation using Invariance and Equivariance in Clustering CVPR 2021 Project
Scott Wehrwein, Kavita Bala, and Noah Snavely. Scene Summarization via Motion Normalization Transactions on Visualization and Graphics, 27(4), pp 2495-2501, 2021
Bei Xiao, Shuang Zhao, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Wenyan Bi, Kavita Bala. Effect of Geometric Sharpness on Translucent Material Perception JOV, 2020
Rachel Rose Getman, Denise Nicole Green, Kavita Bala, Utkarsh Mall, Nehal Rawat, Sonia Appasamy, Bharath Hariharan. Machine Learning (ML) for Tracking Fashion Trends: Documenting the Frequency of the Baseball Cap on Social Media and the Runway Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, June 2020
Fujun Luan, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala, and Ioannis Gkioulekas. Langevin Monte Carlo Rendering with Gradient-based Adaptation SIGGRAPH, 2020
Yutao Han*, Hubert Lin*, Jacopo Banfi*, Kavita Bala, and Mark Campbell. DeepSemanticHPPC: Hypothesis-based Planning over Uncertain Semantic Point Clouds * are equal contribution authors. ICRA, 2020
Chengqian Che, Fujun Luan, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala, Ioannis Gkioulekas. Towards Learning-based Inverse Subsurface Scattering ICCP, 2020 Project
Utkarsh Mall, Kevin Matzen, Bharath Hariharan, Noah Snavely Kavita Bala. GeoStyle: Discovering Fashion Trends and Events ICCV, 2019 Project
Hubert Lin, Paul Upchurch, Kavita Bala. Block Annotation: Better Image Annotation with Sub-Image Decomposition ICCV, 2019 Project
Hubert Lin, Melinos Averkiou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Balazs Kovacs, Siddhant Ranade, Vladimir Kim, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Kavita Bala. Learning Material-Aware Local Descriptors for 3D Shapes 3DV, 2018
Fujun Luan, Sylvain Paris, Eli Shechtman, Kavita Bala. Deep Painterly Harmonization Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR), 2018 Project
Balazs Kovacs, Peter O'Donovan, Kavita Bala, Aaron Hertzmann. Context-Aware Asset Search for Graphic Design Transactions on Visualization and Graphics (TVCG), 2018 Project
Bei Xiao, Wenyan Bi, Shuang Zhao, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Kavita Bala. Does geometric sharpness affect the perception of translucent materials? Vision Sciences Society, 2018
Pramook Khungurn, Rundong Wu, James Noeckel, Steve Marschner, Kavita Bala. Fast Rendering of Fabric Micro-Appearance Models Under Directional and Spherical Gaussian Lights SIGGRAPH Asia Project
Kevin Matzen, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely. StreetStyle: Exploring world-wide clothing styles from millions of photos arXiv, June 2017 Project
Fujun Luan, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala. Fiber-Level On-the-Fly Procedural Textures EGSR 2017 Project
Fujun Luan, Sylvain Paris, Eli Shechtman, and Kavita Bala. Deep Photo Style Transfer CVPR 2017 Project
Paul Upchurch, Jacob Gardner, Robert Pless, Noan Snavely, Kavita Bala, and Kilian Weinberger. Deep Feature Interpolation for Image Content Changes CVPR 2017 Project
Balazs Kovacs, Sean Bell, Noah Snavely, and Kavita Bala. Shading Annotations in the Wild CVPR 2017 Project
Nicolas Bonneel, Balazs Kovacs, Sylvain Paris, and Kavita Bala. Intrinsic Decompositions for Image Editing Eurographics STAR 2017 (State-of-the-Art Report), Computer Graphics Forum Project
Paul Upchurch, Daniel Sedra, Andrew Mullen, Haym Hirsh, and Kavita Bala. Interactive Consensus Games for Labeling Images HComp 2016 Project
Shuang Zhao, Fujun Luan, Kavita Bala. Fitting Procedural Yarn Models for Realistic Cloth Rendering SIGGRAPH 2016 Project
Sean Bell, Lawrence Zitnick, Kavita Bala, Ross Girshick. Inside-Outside Net: Detecting Objects in Context with Skip Pooling and Recurrent Neural Networks CVPR 2016 Project, Bibtex
Ivaylo Boyadzhiev, Jiawen Chen, Sylvain Paris, Kavita Bala. Do-It-Yourself Lighting Design for Product Videography ICCP 2016 Project, Bibtex
Andreas Veit, Balazs Kovacs, Sean Bell, Julian McAuley, Kavita Bala, Serge Belongie. Learning Visual Clothing Style with Heterogeneous Dyadic Co-occurrences ICCV 2015 Dec 2015 Bibtex
Pramook Khungurn, Daniel Schroeder, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala, Steve Marschner. Matching Micro-Appearance Models to Real Fabrics TOG 2015 (presented at SIGGRAPH 2016) Dec 2015 Project, Bibtex
Scott Wehrwein, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely. Shadow Detection and Sun Direction in Photo Collections 3DV 2015 Nov 2015 Project, Bibtex
Ivaylo Boyadzhiev, Kavita Bala, Sylvain Paris, Edward Adelson. Band-Sifting Decomposition for Image Based Material Editing TOG 2015 (presented at SIGGRAPH 2016) Oct 2015 Project, Bibtex
Sean Bell, Kavita Bala. Learning visual similarity for product design with convolutional neural networks SIGGRAPH 2015 Aug 2015 Project, Bibtex
Sean Bell, Paul Upchurch, Noah Snavely, Kavita Bala. Material Recognition in the Wild with the Materials in Context Database CVPR 2015 Jun 2015 Project, Bibtex
Ioannis Gkioulekas, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Ted Adelson, Todd Zickler. On the Appearance of Translucent Edges CVPR 2015 Jun 2015 Project, Bibtex
Daniel Cabrini Hauagge, Scott Wehrwein, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely Photometric Ambient Occlusion for Intrinsic Image Decomposition Special Issue of PAMI (extension of CVPR 2013 paper) July 2015 Project, Bibtex
Manohar Srikanth, Kavita Bala, Fredo Durand Computational Rim Illumination of Dynamic Subjects Using Aerial Robots Invited Paper from Computational Aesthetics 2015 Project, Bibtex
Shuang Zhao, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, Kavita Bala. Building Volumetric Appearance Models of Fabric Using Micro CT Imaging CACM 2014 (previously published in SIGGRAPH 2011) CACM, Vol 57, No. 11, Pages 98-105 Project, Bibtex
Rui Wang, Xiangjin Yang, Yazhen Yuan, Wei Chen, Kavita Bala, Hujun Bao. Automatic Shader Simplification Using Surface Signal Approximation SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 Dec 2014 Project, Bibtex
Sean Bell, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely. Intrinsic Images in the Wild SIGGRAPH 2014 Aug 2014 Project, Bibtex
Shuang Zhao, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Kavita Bala. High-Order Similarity Relations in Radiative Transfer SIGGRAPH 2014 Aug 2014 Project, Bibtex
Manohar Srikanth, Kavita Bala, Fredo Durand Computational Rim Illumination with Aerial Robots Computational Aesthetics (Best Paper Award) 2014 Project, Bibtex
Daniel Cabrini Hauagge, Scott Wehrwein, Paul Upchurch, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely Reasoning about Photo Collections using Models of Outdoor Illumination British Machine Vision Conference 2014 Project, Bibtex
Daniel Cabrini Hauagge, Scott Wehrwein, Noah Snavely, Kavita Bala Reasoning about Photo Collections using Outdoor Illumination Models Scene Understanding Workshop 2014 Project, Bibtex
Laurent Belcour, Kavita Bala, Cyril Soler. A Local Frequency Analysis of Light Scattering and Absorption Transactions on Graphics'14 (to be presented at SIGGRAPH '14) 2014 Project, Bibtex
Bei Xiao, Bruce Walter, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Todd Zickler, Edward Adelson, Kavita Bala. Looking against the light: How perception of translucency depends on lighting direction Journal of Vision '14 Mar 2014 Project, Bibtex
Kavita Bala. Modeling Cloth at Micron Resolution Measuring, Modeling, and Reproducing Material Appearance (Invited Talk) Jan 2014 Bibtex
Ioannis Gkioulekas, Shuang Zhao, Kavita Bala, Todd Zickler, Anat Levin. Inverse Volume Rendering with Material Dictionaries SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 Nov 2013 Project, Bibtex
Sean Bell, Paul Upchurch, Noah Snavely, Kavita Bala. OpenSurfaces: A richly annotated catalog of surface appearance SIGGRAPH 2013 July 2013 Project, Bibtex
Shuang Zhao, Miloŝ Haŝan, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Kavita Bala. Modular Flux Transfer: Efficient Rendering of High-Resolution Volumes with Repeated Structures SIGGRAPH 2013 July 2013 Project, Bibtex
Ivaylo Boyadzhiev, Sylvain Paris, Kavita Bala User-Assisted Image Compositing for Photographic Lighting SIGGRAPH 2013 July 2013 Project, Bibtex
Daniel Cabrini Hauagge, Scott Wehrwein, Kavita Bala, Noah Snavely Photometric Ambient Occlusion CVPR 2013 (Oral) June 2013 Project, Bibtex
Ioannis Gkioulekas, Bei Xiao, Shuang Zhao, Ted Adelson, Todd Zickler, Kavita Bala Understanding the Role of Phase Function in Translucent Appearance Transactions on Graphics 2013, 32(5) Oct 2013 Project, Bibtex
Ivaylo Boyadhziev, Kavita Bala, Sylvain Paris, Fredo Durand. User-Guided White Balance for Mixed Lighting Conditions SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 November 2012 Project, Bibtex
Bruce Walter, Pramook Khungurn, Kavita Bala. Bidirectional Lightcuts SIGGRAPH 2012 August 2012 Project, Bibtex
Shuang Zhao, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, Kavita Bala. Structure-Aware Synthesis for Predictive Woven Fabric Appearance SIGGRAPH 2012 August 2012 Project, Bibtex
Bei Xiao, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Asher Dunn, Shuang Zhao, Todd Zickler, Ted Adelson, Kavita Bala. Effects of shape and color on the perception of translucency VSS 2012 May 2012 Bibtex
Adrian Jarabo, Tom Van Eyck, Veronica Sundstedt, Kavita Bala, Diego Gutierrez, Carol O' Sullivan. Crowd Light: Evaluating the Perceived Fidelity of Illuminated Dynamic Scenes Eurographics 2012 May 2012 Project, Bibtex
Kavita Bala. Predictive Rendering for Accurate Material Perception HVEI 2012, Invited Paper January 2012 Bibtex
Nikhil Naik, Shuang Zhao, Andreas Velten, Ramesh Raskar, Kavita Bala. Single View Reflectance Capture using Multiplexed Scattering and Time-of-flight Imaging SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 December 2011 Project, Bibtex
Shuang Zhao, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, Kavita Bala. Building Volumetric Appearance Models of Fabric using Micro CT Imaging SIGGRAPH 2011 August 2011 Project, Bibtex
Adam Arbree, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Heterogeneous Subsurface Scattering Using the Finite Element Method Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics '11 July 2011 Project, Bibtex
Tomas Davidovic, Jaroslav Krivanek, Miloŝ Haŝan, Philipp Slusallek, Kavita Bala. Combining Global and Local Virtual Lights for Detailed Glossy Illumination SIGGRAPH Asia '10 December 2010, Seoul Project, Bibtex
Jaroslav Krivanek, James Ferwerda, Kavita Bala. Effects of Global Illumination Approximations on Material Appearance SIGGRAPH '10 July 2010, LA Project, Supplementary Material, Bibtex
Wenzel Jakob, Adam Arbree, Jon Moon, Kavita Bala, Steve Marschner. A radiative transfer framework for rendering materials with anisotropic structure SIGGRAPH '10 July 2010, LA Project, Extended TR, Bibtex
Edgar Velazquez-Armendariz, Shuang Zhao, Miloŝ Haŝan, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Automatic Bounding of Programmable Shaders for Efficient Global Illumination SIGGRAPH Asia '09 December 2009, Yokohama, Japan Project, Bibtex
Miloŝ Haŝan, Jaroslav Krivanek, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Virtual Spherical Lights for Many-Light Rendering of Glossy Scenes SIGGRAPH Asia '09 December 2009, Yokohama, Japan Project, Bibtex
Milind Kulkarni, Keshav Pingali, Bruce Walter, Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Kavita Bala, Paul Chew. Optimistic Parallelism Requires Abstractions Research Highlights, Communications of the ACM September 2009 Bibtex
Bruce Walter, Shuang Zhao, Nicolas Holzschuch, Kavita Bala. Single Scattering in Refractive Media with Triangle Mesh Boundaries SIGGRAPH '09 August 2009, New Orleans, LA Project, Bibtex
Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Kavita Bala, James Ferwerda. Perception of Complex Aggregates SIGGRAPH '08 August 2008, Los Angeles CA Project, Bibtex
James Ferwerda, Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Visual Equivalence: an object-based approach to image quality Proceedings of IS&T 16th Color Imaging Conference (CIC) '08 Nov 2008 Project, Bibtex
Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Milind Kulkarni, Keshav Pingali. Fast Agglomerative Clustering for Rendering Interactive Ray Tracing (IRT 2008) August 2008, Los Angeles Bibtex
Miloŝ Haŝan, Edgar Velazquez-Armendariz, Fabio Pellacini, Kavita Bala. Tensor Clustering for Rendering Many-Light Animations Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR 2008) June 2008, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina Project, Bibtex
Milind Kulkarni, Keshav Pingali, Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Paul Chew. Scheduling Strategies for Optimistic Parallel Execution of Irregular Programs Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA '08) June 2008, Munich, Germany Bibtex
Adam Arbree, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Single-pass Scalable Subsurface Rendering with Lightcuts Eurographics '08 April 2008, Crete Project, Bibtex
Ganesh Ramanarayanan, James Ferwerda, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Dimensionality of Visual Complexity in Computer Graphics Scenes SPIE Human Vision and Electronic Imaging (HVEI) '08 Jan 2008, San Jose CA Bibtex
Milind Kulkarni, Keshav Pingali, Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Paul Chew. Optimistic Parallelism Benefits from Data Partitioning ASPLOS '08 Mar 2008, Seattle Bibtex
Ganesh Ramanarayanan, James Ferwerda, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Visual Equivalence: Towards a new standard for Image Fidelity SIGGRAPH 2007 August 2007, San Diego CA Project, Bibtex
Miloŝ Haŝan, Fabio Pellacini, Kavita Bala. Matrix Row-Column Sampling for the Many Lights Problem SIGGRAPH 2007 August 2007, San Diego MA Project, Bibtex
Fabio Pellacini, Miloŝ Haŝan, Kavita Bala. Interactive Cinematic Relighting with Global Illumination Chapter 9, GPU Gems 3
Milind Kulkarni, Keshav Pingali, Bruce Walter, Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Kavita Bala, Paul Chew. Optimistic Parallelism Requires Abstractions PLDI 2007 June 2007, San Diego MA Bibtex
Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Kavita Bala. Constrained Texture Synthesis via Energy Minimization IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Graphics 2007 pp 167-178, Jan/Feb 2007 Bibtex
Bruce Walter, Adam Arbree, Kavita Bala, Donald Greenberg. Multidimensional lightcuts SIGGRAPH 2006 pp 1081--1088, August 2006, Boston MA Project, Bibtex
Miloŝ Haŝan, Fabio Pellacini, Kavita Bala. Direct-to-Indirect Transfer for Cinematic Relighting SIGGRAPH 2006 pp 1089--1097, August 2006, Boston MA Project, Bibtex
Edgar Velazquez-Armendariz, Eugene Lee, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala. Implementing the Render Cache and the Edge-and-Point Image on Graphics Hardware Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2006 pp 211-217, June 2006, Quebec Canada Project, Bibtex
Mike Donikian, Bruce Walter, Kavita Bala, Sebastian Fernandez, and Donald Greenberg. Accurate Direct Illumination Using Iterative Adaptive Sampling Proceedings of Transaction on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2006 pp 353--364, May/June 2006 Bibtex
Kavita Bala, Jim Ferwerda, and Bruce Walter. Information-Preserving Imaging for Heterogeneous Networked Displays Workshop on Information Visualization and Interaction Techniques for Collaboration across Multiple Displays April 2006
Bruce Walter, Sebastian Fernandez, Adam Arbree, Kavita Bala, Mike Donikian and Donald Greenberg. Lightcuts: A Scalable Approach to Illumination Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2005, Annual Conference Series pp 1098-1107, July 2005, Los Angeles, CA Project, Bibtex
Bruce Walter, Sebastian Fernandez, Adam Arbree, Kavita Bala, Mike Donikian and Donald Greenberg. Implementing Lightcuts SIGGRAPH 2005 Technical Sketch July 2005, Los Angeles, CA Bibtex
Miloŝ Haŝan, Fabio Pellacini, and Kavita Bala. Real-time Hardware-accelerated Relighting with Approximate Indirect Illumination Technical Report TR2005-1999, Computer Science Department, July 2005
Adam Arbree, Bruce Walter, and Kavita Bala. Pre-processing Environment Maps for Dynamic Hardware Shadows Technical Report TR2005-1998, Computer Science Department, July 2005
Kavita Bala, and Bruce Walter. Reusing Shading for Interactive Global Illumination Course at Game Developers Conference 2004
Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Kavita Bala, and Bruce Walter. Feature-Based Textures Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2004, pp 265--274, June 2004, Norkoping, Sweden Project, Bibtex
Kavita Bala, Bruce Walter and Donald Greenberg. Combining Edges and Points for Interactive High-Quality Rendering Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2003, Annual Conference Series, 22(3): 631--640, July 2003, San Diego, CA Bibtex
Ryan Ismert, Kavita Bala, and Donald Greenberg. Detail Synthesis for Image-Based Texturing Interactive 3D Graphics (I3D), pp 171--176, April 2003, Monterey, CA Bibtex
Ryan Ismert, Kavita Bala, and Donald Greenberg. Detail Synthesis for Image-Based Texturing Longer version of I3D paper with more details Technical Report PCG-03-1, Program of Computer Graphics, January 2003
Phil Dutre, Kavita Bala, and Philippe Baekert. Advanced Global Illumination Course Course 2 at SIGGRAPH 2002
Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, Donald Greenberg. Local Illumination Environments for Direct Lighting Acceleration Thirteenth Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pp 7--14, June 2002, Pisa, Italy. Bibtex
Kavita Bala, Bruce Walter and Donald Greenberg. Combining Edges and Points for Interactive Anti-Aliased Rendering Earlier version of SIGGRAPH 2003 paper Technical Report PCG-02-3, Program of Computer Graphics, January 2002
Phil Dutre, Kavita Bala, and Philippe Baekert. Advanced Global Illumination Course Course 20 at SIGGRAPH 2001
Randima Fernando, Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, and Donald Greenberg. Adaptive Shadow Maps Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2001, Annual Conference Series, pp 387--390, August 2001, Los Angeles, CA Bibtex
Sebastian Fernadez, Kavita Bala, Moreno A. Piccolotto, and Donald Greenberg. Interactive Direct Lighting in Dynamic Scenes Cornell University PCG Technical Report PCG-00-02, January, 2000.
Moreno A. Piccolotto, Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, M. Malone, and Donald Greenberg. A System for 3D Conceptual Modeling for Architectural Design Cornell University PCG Technical Report PCG-00-03, January, 2000.
Kavita Bala, Julie Dorsey, and Seth Teller Bounded-Error Interactive Ray Tracing. MIT Laboratory for Computer Science Technical Report 748 (MIT-TR-748), March, 1998.Color plates: Color Plate 1, and Color Plate 2.
Kavita Bala, Julie Dorsey, and Seth Teller. Radiance Interpolants for Accelerated Bounded-Error Ray Tracing. ACM Transactions on Graphics, Volume 18, Number 3. pp 213-256. August 1999. PS(compressed 4.4 MB, uncompressed 52 MB) Bibtex
Kavita Bala, Julie Dorsey, and Seth Teller. Interactive Ray-Traced Scene Editing Using Ray Segment Trees Tenth Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pp 31--44, June 1999, Granada, Spain. Bibtex
Seth Teller, Kavita Bala, and Julie Dorsey. Conservative Radiance Interpolants for Ray Tracing. Seventh Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pp 257-268, June, 1996, Porto, Portugal. Color Plate Bibtex
Kavita Bala. Conservative Radiance Interpolants for Ray Tracing. Proceedings of the 1996 MIT Workshop on Scalable Computing, August 1996.
Krishna Bala, T. E. Stern, David Simchi-Levi and Kavita Bala. Routing in Linear Lightwave Networks. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Volume 3, Number 4, pp 459--469, 1995.
Kavita Bala, Frans M. Kaashoek and William E. Weihl. Software Prefetching and Caching for Translation Lookaside Buffers . Proceedings of the First Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation (OSDI), pp 243--253, November 1994, Monterey, CA.
Krishna Bala, T. E. Stern and Kavita Bala. Algorithms for Routing in Linear Lightwave Networks. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference of IEEE Infocom,1991. Miami, Florida.
Krishna Bala, T.E. Stern and Kavita Bala. A Minimum Interference Routing Algorithm for a Linear Lightwave Network. Proceedings of IEEE Globecom,1991. Phoenix, Arizona.
Kavita Bala. A Simulator for Linear Lightwave Networks. Columbia University, CTR Technical Report, 1990.
Supervised PhD Theses
<align="right"><width=48></width=48></align="right"> <align="left">Paul Upchurch. Data-Driven Material Recognition and Photorealistic Image Editing Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, July 2018.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Scott Wehrwein. Light and Motion: Modeling and Visualizing how Scenes Change over Time, June 2018.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Pramook Khungurn. Modeling and Rendering Appearance of Hair and Textile Fibers, May 2017.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Sean Bell. Modeling visual appearance with real-world photographs, July 2016.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Kevin Matzen. Computer vision for spatio-temporal analysis of internet photo collections, July 2016 (co-chaired with Noah Snavely).</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Kyle Wilson. Robustly Modeling the World from Photos, May 2016 (co-chaired with Noah Snavely).</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Ivaylo Boyadzhiev. Computational Lighting Design and Image Filtering for Material Enhancement, July 2015.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Shuang Zhao. Modeling and Rendering Fabrics at Micron-Resolution, August 2014.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Daniel Cabrini Hauagge. Vision Under Changing Scene Appearance: Describing the World through Light and Symmetries, August 2014 (co-chaired with Noah Snavely).</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Adam Arbree. Scalable And Heterogeneous Rendering Of Subsurface Scattering Materials, August 2009.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Miloŝ Haŝan. Matrix Sampling for Global Illumination, August 2009.</align="left">
<width=48></width=48> <align="left">Ganesh Ramanarayanan. Visual Equivalence: A New Standard of Image Fidelity for Computer Graphics, August 2008.</align="left">
Theses
Kavita Bala Radiance Interpolants for Interactive Scene Editing and Ray Tracing Doctorate, EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Tehcnology (MIT) MIT Laboratory for Computer Science Technical Report 791 (MIT-LCS-TR-791), September, 1999.
Master of Science, EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Software Prefetching and Caching for Translation Lookaside Buffers . 1995.
Past projects
I have implemented a new rendering model to capture the fine lighting effects of stalactites and stalagmites. Satyan Coorg worked on creating the modelsof the stalactites and stalagmites.
I captured the interference patterns formed by thin oil films/slicks on water using Renderman.

Kavita Bala's Projects

Perception of Complex Scenes
Rendering and modeling complex scenes is challenging. Understanding and exploiting how humans perceive complex scenes is an important area in graphics. We have worked on multiple projects in this area. Understanding how we perceive complex geometric aggregates is an open problem. We study the perception of aggregates to derive metrics for scene simplification (SIG '08) (Project). Standard image fidelity qualities are limiting and do not necessarily capture what is visually important to a graphics practitioner. Visual Equivalence (SIG '07) aims at a new standard of image fidelity that captures what is important in preserving the appearance of objects in a scene (Project).
Scalable high-complexity rendering
Rendering high complexity scenes including complex illumination and rendering effects such as motion blur, participating media, global illumination, and depth-of-field, is challenging. Multidimensional lightcuts (SIG '06) and lightcuts (SIG '05) present a unified, scalable rendering framework to efficiently render complex scenes with such effects. By unifying complex illumination into one framework we achieve high scalability and accurate imagery. (Multidimensional Lightcuts Project, Subsurface Lightcuts Project, Lightcuts Project).
Scalable previewing for cinematic rendering
Previewing still images and animations of scenes with high geometric and illumination complexity, and arbitrary shading models, is useful for applications such as cinematic lighting design. Matrix row-column sampling (SIG '07) treats rendering as the evaluation of a very large matrix of pixel-light interactions; this matrix can be efficiently approximated by evaluating a very small set of pixels, and using them to cluster lights globally, for a fast approximation of the image (Project).Tensor clustering extends this idea to render animations including deforming characters. This work extends the row-column sampling approach to tensors, and introduces a clustering metric that minimizes temporal flicker (Project).
Scene Editing and Cinematic Relighting
Lighting designers and modelers need interactive feedback while designing scenes. Direct-to-indirect transfer (SIG '06), is an interactive relighting engine that uses GPUs to compute indirect illumination as a designer moves lights in a scene. Efficient precomputation and rendering enable high performance, while supporting arbitrary light shaders and high complexity scenes. (Project). When a user changes the scene (but not the lighting), rapidly identifying the parts of the radiance computation that are affected by user manipulation is difficult.5D Ray Segment Trees (EGRW '99) efficiently identify affected radiance interpolants and incrementally ray trace images. (Project).
Feature-Based Graphics
The human visual system is sensitive to features such as silhouettes and shadows. Edge-and-point rendering (SIG '03) identifies visually important features (edges) and combines them with sparse, expensive shading samples to achieve interactive rendering with global illumination. This approach bridges the gap between expensive, high-quality rendering and fast, interactive display. Project, GPU implementation project (GI '06) Feature-based textures (EGSR '04) are a resolution-independent representation of textures that capture visually important features. FBT Project
Detail Synthesis
Detail synthesis (I3D '03) adds visually plausible detail to textures created by image-based modeling. This approach identifies areas of poor detail in extracted textures and automatically creates higher resolution detail for uniformly high-quality textures. Project Constrained Minimization Synthesis (TVCG '06) casts detail synthesis and image analogies as an energy minimization problem, and uses graph cut techniques to synthesize textures while satisfying constraints. Project
Direct Illumination
Adaptive shadow maps (SIG '01) address the fundamental problem of shadow map aliasing by adaptively changing shadow map resolution based on viewpoint. ASM Project Local illumination environments (EGSR '02) capture the part of the environment that influences shading at each part of a scene. This approach enables rendering with complex direct illumination including hundreds of lights. LIE Project Iterative adaptive sampling (TVCG '06) efficiently renders scenes with many lights by adapting the sampling distribution of the lights in a multipass algorithm.
Radiance Interpolants
<align="left">Expensive shading is often smooth and can be often interpolated from sparse samples. Radiance interpolants (TOG '99) are 4D radiance samples that are quadrilinearly interpolated to rapidly approximate radiance with bounded approximation error. Radiance interpolants capture object-space, ray-space, image-space and temporal coherence in the radiance function.Radiance interpolants Project </align="left">
Unpublished research
I have implemented a new rendering model to capture the fine lighting effects of stalactites and stalagmites. Satyan Coorg worked on creating the models of the stalactites and stalagmites.

<class="paperlist">Complete List of Publications... </class="paperlist">

Kavita Bala's Short Bio
Kavita Bala is the 17th Provost of Cornell University. Bala received her S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before becoming provost, she served as the inaugural Dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, and before that was the Chair of the Computer Science Department. Bala leads research in computer vision and computer graphics. She co-founded GrokStyle, a visual recognition AI company, which drew IKEA as a client, and was acquired by Facebook in 2019. Bala has received multiple research and teaching accolades. Bala is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2025), an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow (2019) and Fellow of the SIGGRAPH Academy (2020). She is the recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (2020), and the IIT Bombay Distinguished Alumnus Award (2021). Bala has received multiple Cornell teaching awards (2006, 2009, 2015). She serves on the boards of TTIC,Colorstack (emertius), and the Sciencenter.
Kavita Bala's Full Bio
Kavita Bala is the 17th Provost of Cornell University. 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). She was a post doctoral researcher at the Program of Computer Graphics. She co-founded GrokStyle, a visual recognition AI company, which drew IKEA as a client, and was acquired by Facebook in 2019. Before becoming Provost, Bala was the inaugural Dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, and before that, she served as the Chair of the Computer Science Department. Bala specializes in computer vision and computer graphics, leading research in recognition and visual search; material modeling and acquisition, physically-based rendering; and material perception. Bala's work on scalable rendering, Lightcuts, is the core production rendering engine in Autodesk's cloud renderer; and her instance recognition research is the core technology of GrokStyle's visual search engine. Her work on 3D Mandalas was featured at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York.Bala has received multiple research and teaching accolades. Notably, Bala is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2025), an ACM Fellow (2019) and was inducted into the SIGGRAPH Academy in 2020. She is the recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (2020), and the IIT Bombay Distinguished Alumnus Award (2021). She serves on the boards of TTIC, Colorstack (emertius), and the Sciencenter.Bala serves on SIGGRAPH's Papers Advisory Group (PAG). Bala has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Transactions on Graphics (TOG), on the Papers Advisory Board for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia, and as Associate Editor for TOG (Transactions on Graphics), TVCG (Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics) and CGF (Computer Graphics Forum). Bala has co-authored the graduate-level textbook "Advanced Global Illumination" (A K Peters publisher, second edition). She has chaired SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, and co-chaired Pacific Graphics (2010) and the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (2005). Bala has received the NSF CAREER award, Cornell's College of Engineering Fiona Li and Donald Li Excellence in Teaching Award (2015), James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award (2006 and 2009), and the Affinito-Stewart award.