Bala Kumaravel
I am a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond at the Interactive Multimodal AI Systems group. I work on leveraging Generative AI models (LLMs and Diffusion models) to enhance user productivity and collaboration in business-critical applications. I am particularly interested in customizing, finetuning, and aligning generative AI models for specific end-user applications.
Before joining Microsoft, I completed my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley where I was advised by Prof. Björn Hartmann. My research at Berkeley was concentrated in the domains of Virtual and Augmented Reality, exploring applications in diverse activities, from AR/VR-assisted robotics interactions to enhancing learning experiences. Before that, I completed my Bachelors at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where my Bachelors’ thesis won the best interdisciplinary thesis project amongst all engineering departments and the best thesis in the department.
During my PhD I got to intern at various places and work with amazing collaborators across Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk - Cuong Nguyen , Stephen DiVerdi , Fraser Anderson , Tovi Grossman , George Fitzmaurice , and Andy Wilson
news
Sep 11, 2022 | Started working as Senior Researcher at the Extended, Perception, Interaction and Cognition (EPIC) team at Microsoft Research, Redmond |
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Aug 13, 2022 | Graduated from UC Berkeley, with a PhD in Computer Science! |
selected publications
2024
- SharedNeRF: Leveraging Photorealistic and View-dependent Rendering for Real-time and Remote CollaborationIn Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024
- BlendScape: Enabling Unified and Personalized Video-Conferencing Environments through Generative AIIn , 2024
2023
- StreamFunnel: Facilitating Communication Between a VR Streamer and Many SpectatorsIn , 2023