Navin Goyal graduated from Rutgers University in 2005; his advisor was Mike Saks. His thesis focused on information theoretic limitations on computation in models such as communication protocols. He moved to his native India in 2009 after postdocs at McGill University and Georgia Tech. He gets easily excited about many research topics and has worked in several areas after his thesis, but continues to be interested in the interplay between computation and information.

Michael Saks is a Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University. He has worked in a wide range of areas within theoretical computer science including circuit lower bounds, decision tree complexity, communication complexity, derandomization, online algorithms, and distributed computing. Most recently he has been thinking about communication complexity lower bounds, sublinear time approximation algorithms, polynomial identity testing, and algorithms for stable instances of NP-hard problems.