Maria-Florina (Nina) Balcan is a Romanian-American computer scientist[1][3] whose research investigates machine learning, algorithmic game theory, theoretical computer science,[1] including active learning, kernel methods, random-sampling mechanisms and envy-free pricing.

She is an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

[4][5][6][7] Balcan is originally from Romania, and earned a bachelor's degree in 2000 from the University of Bucharest, earning summa cum laude honors with a double major in mathematics and computer science.

She continued at the University of Bucharest for a master's degree in computer science in 2002, and then earned a PhD in computer science in 2008 from Carnegie Mellon University[8] where her research was supervised by Avrim Blum.

[12] Balcan was named as an ACM Fellow, in the 2023 class of fellows, for "contributions to the foundations of machine learning and its applications to algorithmic economics and algorithm design".