Ioannis Giotis is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Ioannis received his undergraduate degree from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department at the University of Patras, Greece. His research interests include game theory, probabilistic techniques, and approximation algorithms.

Venkatesan Guruswami is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Venkat received his Bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras in 1997 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 under the supervision of Madhu Sudan. He was a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley during 2001-2002. His research interests include the theory of error-correcting codes, approximation algorithms for optimization problems and corresponding hardness results, algebraic algorithms, explicit combinatorial constructions, and pseudorandomness.

Venkat is a recipient of the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (2005), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2005), an NSF Career Award (2004), ACM's Doctoral Dissertation Award (2002), and the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award (2000).

Venkat was born and grew up in the South Indian metropolis of Chennai. He enjoys playing badminton and other racquet games, hiking within his humble limits, listening to Carnatic (South Indian classical) music, and staring at Mount Rainier (on the few days Seattle weather is kind enough to permit a glimpse).