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
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 Collaboration

Mose Sakashita, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Nicolai Marquardt, and Andrew David Wilson

In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024

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Collaborating around physical objects necessitates examining different aspects of design or hardware in detail when reviewing or inspecting physical artifacts or prototypes. When collaborators are remote, coordinating the sharing of views of their physical environment becomes challenging. Video-conferencing tools often do not provide the desired viewpoints for a remote viewer. While RGB-D cameras offer 3D views, they lack the necessary fidelity. We introduce SharedNeRF, designed to enhance synchronous remote collaboration by leveraging the photorealistic and view-dependent nature of Neural Radiance Field (NeRF). The system complements the higher visual quality of the NeRF rendering with the instantaneity of a point cloud and combines them through carefully accommodating the dynamic elements within the shared space, such as hand gestures and moving objects. The system employs a head-mounted camera for data collection, creating a volumetric task space on the fly and updating it as the task space changes. In our preliminary study, participants successfully completed a flower arrangement task, benefiting from SharedNeRF’s ability to render the space in high fidelity from various viewpoints.
BlendScape: Enabling Unified and Personalized Video-Conferencing Environments through Generative AI

Shwetha Rajaram, Nels Numan, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Nicolai Marquardt, and Andrew D. Wilson

In , 2024

2023

StreamFunnel: Facilitating Communication Between a VR Streamer and Many Spectators

Haohua Lyu, Cyrus Vachha, Qianyi Chen, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, and Bjöern Hartmann

In , 2023

2022

Shaping the new future of work through mixed reality

Bala Kumaravel

2022

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Interactive Cross-Dimensional Media for Collaboration and Guidance in Mixed Reality Environments

Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel

University of California, Berkeley, 2022

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Modeling and Influencing Human Attentiveness in Autonomy-to-Human Perception Hand-offs

Yash Vardhan Pant, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Ameesh Shah, Erin Kraemer, Marcell Vazquez-Chanlatte, Kshitij Kulkarni, Bjoern Hartmann, and Sanjit A Seshia

In 2022 IEEE 25th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2022

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DreamStream: Immersive and Interactive Spectating in VR

Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, and Andrew D Wilson

In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022

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2020

TransceiVR: Bridging asymmetrical communication between VR users and external collaborators

Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Cuong Nguyen, Stephen DiVerdi, and Bjoern Hartmann

In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2020

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2019

TutoriVR: A Video-Based Tutorial System for Design Applications in Virtual Reality

Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Cuong Nguyen, Stephen DiVerdi, and Bjoern Hartmann

In CHI ’19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019

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Loki: Facilitating remote instruction of physical tasks using bi-directional mixed-reality telepresence

Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Fraser Anderson, George Fitzmaurice, Bjoern Hartmann, and Tovi Grossman

In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2019

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