People

Biography

Dr. Kala S received her PhD degree from Cochin University of Science And Technology, Kerala, in 2020, her MS (by Research) degree from Center for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in 2013 and BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from MG University, Kerala in 2006. Currently she is leading the Intelligent Integrated Circuits and Systems Research Group (I²CS), where she is taking numerous innovative research and development projects for various industries/agencies, leading to products as well as systems. Dr. Kala is a visiting researcher at Chair of Embedded Systems, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, since 2023.

Dr. Kala is the recipient of prestigious WISER Award (Women Involvement in Science and Engineering Research) from Indo-German Science & Technology Centre (IGSTC), established by DST, Govt of India and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Government of Germany, in the year 2023. Her research, teaching and industry facing activities include Digital System Design, System-On-Chip Design, VLSI and FPGA based system design, Computer Architecture, Intelligent systems for various applications and hardware acceleration of digital signal processing algorithms. She is currently leading research in accelerating deep neural network (DNN) on hardware and approximate computing. She has published research papers in these areas in reputed journals and conferences including TVLSI, ISCAS, VLSID, SOCC, ICM, DTIS, APCCAS and many more. She is the Winner of "Microchip VLSI Design Contest 2025" at 38th IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID) held at Bangalore in the year 2025. She has also received 'Honorable Mention Award from Academia' at 36th IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID) held at Hyderabad in the year 2023, best paper award at IRTM 2021, and best student research forum award at 33 rd IEEE Int’l Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID) Bangalore, 2020.

Dr. Kala has been keynote speaker in many conferences and has delivered numerous technical talks in her field, in various platforms. She is a reviewer for various international journals including IEEE TVLSI, IEEE TCAD, IEEE TNNLS, IEEE Access, various IET journals, Springer Journals and has been serving in technical review committee of reputed conferences including ISCAS, APCCAS, MWCAS, NEWCAS, VLSID, VDAT, ISED and so on.

She has served as the General Chair of IEEE International Conference on Smart Electronics Systems (ISENSE) organized by IIIT Kottayam in 2025. She has also served as General Co-Chair of IEEE International conference ICITIIT, organized by IIIT Kottayam, in two consecutive years, 2022 and 2023 and has served as session chair in various conferences across globe. She is an IEEE Senior Member and has served as the Treasurer, Women In Engineering (WIE), IEEE Kerala Section for the year 2022. She has served in the Organizing Committee of WIE International Leadership Summit (ILS) 2022, as Finance Co-Chair and Website Chair. She has organized a Special Session titled “Intelligence on Chip” at IEEE 19^th India Council International Conference (INDICON) 2022. She has also served in the organizing committee of 19th IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Circuits and Systems (APCCAS) 2023 as Special Session / Short Paper / Late Breaking Paper (LBR) chair. She has also served as Fellowship Chair for the 28th IEEE VLSI Design and Test (VDAT) Symposium, 2024.

Dr. Kala is currently guiding six students towards their PhD degree; one student has completed PhD under her guidance. She is also guiding several innovative undergraduate projects. One of the UG projects has received Kerala State Innovative Project Award in 2021. She is also serving as supervising guide for several interns from various institutions across the country.