Dr. Umakishore Ramachandran received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1986 under the direction of Marvin Solomon. Since then he has been with Georgia Tech (home of the yellow jackets), where he is currently a Professor in the Core Computing Division in the College of Computing. His research interests are in the area of architectural design, programming, and analysis of parallel and distributed systems. At Georgia Tech, he has been involved in the design and evaluation of several large experimental systems including Clouds, Beehive, and Stampede (joint with Compaq Cambridge Research Lab), and studying their scalability from an applications perspective. Currently, in the ubiquitous presence project, he is investigating software and hardware mechanisms for ubiquitous distributed computing for an environment comprised of distributed sensors, embedded data concentrators, and backend clusters. He received a Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1990, the Georgia Tech Doctoral Thesis Advisor award in 1993, the College of Computing Outstanding Senior Research Faculty award in 1996, the College of Computing Dean's Award in 2003, and the College of Computing William "Gus'' Baird Teaching Award in 2004.

William D. "Bill" Leahy, Jr. is currently working as a lecturer at Georgia Tech teaching introductory Computer Science. Bill earned his MS in Computer Science, from Georgia Institute of Technology, his MS in Ceramic Engineering, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a BS in Ceramic Engineering, from Virginia Tech. Visit Bill's web page for more information about his education and experience.