Mateusz Michałek is an algebraic geometer by training and a combinatorist at heart. He earned his Ph.D. in 2012 from the Polish Academy of Sciences, supervised by Jarosław Wiśniewski, and Université Joseph Fourier, supervised by Laurent Manivel. He held postdoc positions at Berkeley, FU Berlin, MPI Bonn, Oberwolfach, IMPAN Warsaw, the University of Barcelona, and RIMS Kyoto. After a few great years leading a research group at MPI MiS Leipzig, he settled at the University of Konstanz--where he claims to be equally inspired by theorems, the lake, and the Alps (in no particular order).

Joseph (JM) Landsberg works on geometric problems originating in complexity theory. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1990 from Duke University under the direction of Robert Bryant on minimal submanifolds and a generalization of calibrations. His past research was at the interface of algebraic geometry, differential geometry and representation theory. He is an Owen Professor of Mathematics at Texas A&M University. Landsberg has directed fifteen Ph.D. theses, is the author of five books:

• Quantum Computation and Quantum Information: A Mathematical Perspective, AMS (2024) [AMS Bookstore]
• Tensors: Asymptotic Geometry and Developments 2016-2018, AMS (2019) [AMS Bookstore]
• Geometry and Complexity Theory, Cambridge U. Press (2017) [CUP]
• Tensors: Geometry and Applications, AMS (2012) [AMS Bookstore]
• Cartan for Beginners (co-author Thomas A. Ivey), AMS (2003), 2nd edition (2016) [AMS Bookstore]

and has published over 100 research articles. Fall 2025 he co-organized the semester “Complexity and Linear algebra” at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, UC Berkeley. At the same time he also served as a UC Berkeley Chancellor's Professor. Landsberg was first exposed to the beauty of geometry in college while taking a calculus course for Physics majors being taught by Joe Harris, and first exposed to complexity by Peter Bürgisser, who offered him a bottle of champagne if he could solve a question about 2×2 matrices.