About the Authors
Jin-Yi Cai
Professor
University of Wisconsin--Madison, WI
jyc[ta]cs[td]wisc[td]edu
pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jyc/
Professor
University of Wisconsin--Madison, WI
jyc[ta]cs[td]wisc[td]edu
pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jyc/
Jin-Yi Cai grew up in Shanghai, China, and attended schools there.
He studied mathematics at Fudan University
(class of 77), where his first interest was analysis.
He continued his studies at Temple University,
where he was greatly influenced by
Donald
J. Newman. It was during that period that he came in contact with complexity theory.
He also realized that a trick he had “invented,”
to the displeasure of some of his teachers, was really a matter about
the complexity of proofs and would fit nicely within this theory.
His trick was to reduce all Euclidean geometry problems,
for which he could not always find a clever proof quickly enough,
to a computational problem via coordinates, replacing the need
for cleverness.
He studied complexity theory at Cornell University under the guidance of Juris Hartmanis, and received his Ph.D. in 1986. Then he held faculty positions at Yale University (1986-1989), Princeton University (1989-1993), and SUNY Buffalo (1993-2000). He is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. He was a Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. He was elected a Fellow of the ACM in 2001. His main research interest is complexity theory. He has published over 100 research papers.
Aaron Gorenstein
University of Wisconsin--Madison, WI
agorenst[ta]cs[td]wisc[td]edu
pages.cs.wisc.edu/~agorenst/
University of Wisconsin--Madison, WI
agorenst[ta]cs[td]wisc[td]edu
pages.cs.wisc.edu/~agorenst/
Aaron Gorenstein first realized he wanted to study computer
science after taking some introductory courses at
Boston University.
During his college studies at the
University of Rochester,
he decided to focus on theory after taking an algorithms course.
Under his advisor
Lane Hemaspaandra,
Aaron pursued his interest in complexity theory and graduated
from Rochester with a BSc and Msc in computer science.
He is currently a graduate student studying under
Jin-Yi Cai at the
University of Wisconsin--Madison.
When not studying computer science, he enjoys practicing the piano
and reading historical nonfiction.