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 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.