Amir Shpilka obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2001 under the supervision of Avi Wigderson. From 2005 to 2014 he was a faculty member at the CS department at the Technion. In October 2014 he joined the CS department at Tel-Aviv University. He is married to Carmit and has two children. His research interests lie in complexity theory, especially in arithmetic circuit complexity. When not working or enjoying his family he likes to read and play chess.

Ilya Volkovich graduated from the Computer Science Department of the Technion in 2012, where he had the pleasure of doing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Amir Shpilka. The topic of his thesis was Polynomial Identity Testing and related algebraic problems. Subsequently he was a postdoc at the Center for Computational Intractability at Princeton University and held a visiting position at the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. Currently he is a postdoctoral visitor at the University of Michigan. His research interests lie in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, in particular in computational complexity theory, derandomization, algebraic complexity and applications of algebraic tools to algorithms and other areas of CS. His recent interests also include algorithmic and general game theory.