Michael B. Cohen (1992--2017) received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posthumously in 2018. He was advised by Jonathan Kelner. He was supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship and was awarded the Machtey Award for the best student paper at FOCS 2016. He made important contributions to algorithmic spectral graph theory, randomized numerical linear algebra, and convex optimization.

Michael tragically passed away in September 2017 due to complications from undiagnosed Type I diabetes. He is dearly missed and remembered for his unbounded excitement, his energy, and his love of both knowledge and people.

Cameron Musco is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, where he was advised by Nancy Lynch and supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship. After MIT, Cameron was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England. He studies algorithms, often randomized ones, working at the intersection of theoretical computer science, numerical linear algebra, optimization, and machine learning

Jakub Pachocki is a Research Lead at OpenAI. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016, where he was advised by Gary Miller. After that he was a postdoctoral fellow under Jelani Nelson at Harvard University.