Raja Bala
Principal Applied Scientist
Amazon
MSEE 1988, PhD EE 1992
I am greatly indebted to my PhD advisors Jan Allebach and Charles Bouman for being my role models until this day. They emphasized the importance of developing a broad fundamental background in engineering that prepared me for a lifetime of learning, change, and adaptation. They instilled in me a deep sense of scientific curiosity, and set the highest standards for quality, timeliness and integrity of research. They taught me that meaningful research is more than just finding the right answers. It involves asking the right questions – ones that provoke inquiry and discovery towards practical benefits for humankind."
Dr. Raja Bala earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1992. He is Principal Applied Scientist for Amazon. Previously, Bala held positions as Principal Scientist and Leader of the Collaborative Visual Computing Group at Xerox PARC, Principal Engineer at Samsung Research America, and Adjunct Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Bala’s research interests are at the intersection of computer vision, digital imaging, and machine learning, with a recent focus on incorporating domain models into data-driven visual learning methods. His innovations are found in several commercial products, including the Xerox iGen3 Digital Press, Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone, and Procter & Gamble’s Olay Skin Advisor. Bala holds over 180 patents and 100 publications in computer vision and digital imaging, and is recipient of the Xerox Anne Mulcahy Award for significant business impact from intellectual property. He is a Fellow of IS&T, and co-editor of the book “Computer Vision and Imaging in Intelligent Transportation Systems.”
Bala earned his BS in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington in 1987.