Nikhil Bansal graduated from CMU in 2003. His advisor was Avrim Blum. His research has focused on approximation and online algorithms for scheduling and other optimization problems.

Ryan Williams graduated from CMU in 2007. His advisor was Manuel Blum, who tried for years to get Ryan to help him formulate a nontrivial theory of machine consciousness. Failing miserably, Ryan turned to easier problems. Ryan is from rural Alabama, where squirrel meat is a delicacy and farming is not an exotic profession.