About the Author(s)

  Yossi Azar 
  professor 
  School of Computer Science 
  Tel-Aviv University 
  Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel 
  azar[ta]cs[td]tau[td]ac[td]il 
  http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~azar

Yossi Azar received his Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University in 1989 (supervised by Noga Alon). He spent several years in the Bay Area (Stanford, DEC, IBM); his experience there included the Loma Prieta earthquake, 7.1 on the Richter scale. In 1994 he joined the computer science faculty at Tel-Aviv University. He was the chair of the department between 2002 and 2004. His main research interests are in the theory of algorithms, especially online, randomized and approximation algorithms, as well as in trying to understand his three children.

  Avrim Blum 
  professor 
  Department of Computer Science 
  Carnegie Mellon University 
  Pittsburgh PA 15213-3891 
  avrim[ta]cs[td]cmu[td]edu 
  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~avrim

Avrim Blum grew up in Berkeley, CA, and then went to MIT for undergraduate and graduate school. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science under the supervision of Ron Rivest, and now works in the family business. His research interests include approximation algorithms, online algorithms, and machine learning theory. He has two children, Alex and Aaron, who may or may not go into the family business.

  David P. Bunde 
  graduate student 
  Department of Computer Science 
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
  Urbana, IL 61801 
  bunde[ta]uiuc[td]edu 
  http://compgeom.cs.uiuc.edu/~bunde

David Bunde is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Computer Science department at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, supervised by Jeff Erickson. Most of his research has been on scheduling and processor allocation, though he also likes to work on other algorithmic problems like the current paper and graph pebbling. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and playing strategy games, particularly Civilization III.

  Yishay Mansour 
  professor 
  School of Computer Science 
  Tel-Aviv University 
  Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel 
  mansour[ta]cs[td]tau[td]ac[td]il 
  http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~mansour

Yishay Mansour obtained his B.A. in 1985 and his M.Sc. in 1987 at the Technion; his M.Sc. advisor was Prof. Shmuel Zaks. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT in 1990 under the supervision of Professors Shafi Goldwasser and Baruch Awerbuch. Subsequently he became a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Research Staff Member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Since 1992 he has been with the School of Computer Science at Tel-Aviv University, where he was the chairman during 2000-2002. His research interests include online algorithms, communication networks, machine learning, reinforcement learning and the theory of computation.