About the Authors
Siavosh Benabbas
PhD Candidate
University of Toronto
siavosh[ta]cs[td]toronto[td]edu
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~siavosh
PhD Candidate
University of Toronto
siavosh[ta]cs[td]toronto[td]edu
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~siavosh
Siavosh Benabbas got his B.Sc. from
Sharif University of Technology
under the supervision of
Mohammad Ghodsi in the
Department of Computer Engineering.
Since 2006, Siavosh has been
a graduate student in the
Department of Computer Science
at the
University of Toronto.
There, he received his M.Sc. under the
supervision of
Avner Magen and
Charles Rackoff,
while he is currently anticipating his graduation
with a Ph.D. supervised by
Toni Pitassi.
Siavosh is interested in questions touching on Linear
Programming and Semidefinite Programming Relaxations, their
Integrality Gaps and their applications to Combinatorial
Optimization.
Konstantinos Georgiou
Post-doctoral fellow
Department of Combinatorics and Optimization
Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
k2georgiou[ta]math[td]uwaterloo[td]ca
http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~k2georgi/
Post-doctoral fellow
Department of Combinatorics and Optimization
Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
k2georgiou[ta]math[td]uwaterloo[td]ca
http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~k2georgi/
Konstantinos Georgiou (or Costis as friends call him) did his
undergraduate studies at the
Department of Mathematics at the
University of Athens
(1998-2002), from where he also received his
M.Sc. in Logic and Algorithms (2002-2004). In 2005 he moved to
Toronto where he received his Ph.D. under the supervision of
Avner Magen and
Toni Pitassi (2010).
Currently, he is a postdoctoral
fellow at the
Department
of Combinatorics and Optimization at the
University of Waterloo,
working on projects varying from Convex
Optimization to Complexity Theory to Combinatorial Optimization
to Algorithmic Game Theory. Costis spends
his free time in his kitchen where he experiments
with flavors and recipes.
Avner Magen
Formerly Associate Professor
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~avner
Formerly Associate Professor
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~avner
Avner Magen (1968-2010) did his undergraduate and
graduate studies at
Hebrew University
and received his Ph.D. in
Computer Science
in 2002 under the supervision of
Nati Linial.
After holding a postdoctoral fellowship at
NEC Research
in Princeton, NJ, he joined the
University of Toronto in 2002,
first as a postdoctoral fellow, and then as an Assistant
Professor in 2004. He was promoted to Associate Professor in
2009. Avner was a superb scholar, making fundamental
contributions to a number of areas of theoretical computer
science that include Metric Embeddings, Sublinear Algorithms,
Convex Programming, Computational Geometry, and Approximation
Algorithms. He was a wonderful colleague with a terrific sense of
humor and great energy. He was a dedicated research supervisor
and a superb teacher.
He died at 42 in an avalanche while on a climbing tour in Alaska.
He is sorely missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and students.
Madhur Tulsiani
Assistant Professor
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
madhurt[ta]ttic[td]edu
http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~madhurt/
Assistant Professor
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
madhurt[ta]ttic[td]edu
http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~madhurt/
Madhur Tulsiani did his B.Tech. in
Computer Science at
IIT Kanpur, mentored by Professor
Somenath Biswas
(2001-05). He completed his Ph.D. at
UC Berkeley (2005-09)
under
Luca Trevisan.
After graduation
he spent two years as a postdoc at
the Institute for Advanced Study and
Princeton University, and is
currently an assistant professor at the
Toyota Technological
Institute at Chicago. His research interests include Complexity
Theory, Optimization, Approximation and Inapproximability,
Pseudorandomness, and Cryptography.