Amey Bhangale is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Riverside. Amey got his undergraduate degree from VJTI, Mumbai. In the final year of his undergraduate studies, he met Prof. Rajiv C. Gandhi, who was visiting Mumbai in 2010/11 on a Fulbright scholarship and taught a course on approximation algorithms at VJTI. This encounter influenced Amey to pursue research in the theory of computing. Amey graduated from Rutgers University in 2017 under the supervision of Swastik Kopparty. He spent two wonderful years in Israel where he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science, hosted by Irit Dinur. He is interested in approximation algorithms, hardness of approximation and the analysis of Boolean functions. He enjoys playing and watching tennis (and hardly ever says no to anyone who invites him to play tennis).

Subhash Khot is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at New York University. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, completed in 2003 under the supervision of Sanjeev Arora.

His teacher and mentor at Vyankatrao Highschool, Mr. Vaman G. Gogate played a decisive role in directing his attention to mathematics. If not for Mr. Gogate’s guidance and some fortuitous turn of events, the chance of someone from the remote town of Ichalkaranji pursuing mathematical research was strictly nil. Subsequently, Mr. Gogate also mentored Amit Deshpande and Raghav Kulkarni (CS theorists) and Abhijit Gadde (string theorist). He is in touch with all his past students and continues to provide guidance on all aspects of life.