Chandra Chekuri is a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) at Bell Labs of Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey. He joined the labs after finishing his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University under the supervision of Rajeev Motwani. Before that he obtained his B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (now Chennai). He is primarily interested in algorithms for discrete optimization problems with current research focussing on approximation algorithms. He has worked on various real world problems at Bell Labs and appreciates the difficulty in finding the right balance between theory and practice. He grew up for the most part in the town of Rajahmundry on the banks of the beautiful river Godavari.

Sanjeev Khanna is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department of Stanford University under the supervision of Rajeev Motwani. He obtained an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Economics from Birla Institute of Technology (BITS), Pilani, India. His research interests are in algorithms and complexity with a focus on approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation. He spends his free time playing games with his son Nalin.

Bruce Shepherd is a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) at Bell Labs of Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey. Prior to that he was a Reader at the London School of Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization under the supervision of Bill Pulleyblank. He obtained an undergraduate degree joint in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Victoria. His research interests are in graphs and networks, polyhedral combinatorics, mathematical programming, algorithms and optimization.