Biographical sketches of authors

Sougata Mukherjea IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (smukherj@in.ibm.com). Dr. Mukherjea is a Research Staff Member in the IBM India Research Laboratory. He received his bachelor's degree from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, his M.S. degree from Northeastern University, Boston, and his Ph.D. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (all in computer science). Before joining IBM, he held research and software architect positions in Silicon Valley companies including NEC USA, BEA Systems, and Verity. His research interests include information visualization and retrieval and applications of text mining in areas such as Web search and bioinformatics.

L. Venkata Subramaniam IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (lvsubram@in.ibm.com). Dr. Subramaniam has been a Research Staff Member in the IBM India Research Laboratory since 1998. He received his bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering from the P. E. S. College of Engineering, his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Washington University, St. Louis, and his Ph.D. degree in electronics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His research interests include unstructured information management, statistical natural language processing, machine learning, text mining, and the application of these technologies.

Gaurav Chanda IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (ggaurav_chanda_81@yahoo.com). Mr. Chanda has been a master's student in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology since August 2003. He received his B.Tech. degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in May 2003. From May to July 2002, he worked as a summer intern at l'Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA), Rocquencourt, and in the summer of 2003 he worked as a trainee at the IBM India Research Laboratory. His research interests include computer vision, machine learning, and computer graphics.

Sriram Sankararaman IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (rsrssr@yahoo.com). Mr. Sankararaman is currently in the final year of the B.Tech. program in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. His research interests include networks, security, multimedia systems, bioinformatics, and quantum computing. He contributed to this paper while visiting the IBM India Research Laboratory as a summer trainee in 2003.

Ravi Kothari IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India (rkothari@in.ibm.com). Dr. Kothari received the B.E. degree (with distinction) from Birla Institute of Technology, India, the M.S. degree from Louisiana State University, and the Ph.D. degree from West Virginia University, all in electrical engineering. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECECS) and Computer Science of the University of Cincinnati (UC), Ohio, as an Assistant Professor; he later became a tenured Associate Professor and Director of the Artificial Neural Systems Laboratory. Since June of 2002, Dr. Kothari has worked in the IBM India Research Laboratory, New Delhi. His theoretical areas of interest include pattern recognition, machine learning, data mining, self-organization, and dimensionality reduction. He is currently applying these technologies in commerce, life sciences, and other domains. Dr. Kothari received the William E. Restemeyer Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of ECECS at UC in 1994 and the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Professor of the Year Award from the Department of ECECS at UC in 1995. He serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, as an Editorial Board member of the Pattern Analysis and Applications Journal, and as a member of the program committees of numerous conferences. Dr. Kothari is a member of Sigma Xi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Phi Kappa Phi; he is an IEEE Distinguished Visitor (2003–2005).

Vishal Batra IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (bvishal@in.ibm.com). Mr. Batra is a Technical Staff Member at the IBM India Research Laboratory. He received his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and has worked with IBM Research since June 2001. Prior to joining IBM, he worked on a variety of projects ranging from Internet banking to healthcare. His areas of interests are distributed and parallel systems. At IBM, Mr. Batra has worked on unstructured information management systems for the UIMA and WebFountain projects. His current focus is on WebFountain partner enablement and integration.

Deo Bhardwaj IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (bhardwa@in.ibm.com). Mr. Bhardwaj is a Technical Staff Member at the IBM India Research Laboratory. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the Regional Engineering College, Rourkela. Prior to joining IBM, he was a software engineer at Kanrad Technology (Bangalore), Rebbrigade (Johannesburg), and Avery India Limited (Faridabad), and contributed to the design and development of various projects. His areas of interest are text analysis, unstructured information management, and natural language processing for bioinformatics and Web search.

Biplav Srivastava IBM Research Division, IBM India Research Laboratory, Block I, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (sbiplav@in.ibm.com). Dr. Srivastava is a Research Staff Member at the IBM India Research Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees (with an emphasis on planning, scheduling, and distributed computing) from Arizona State University and his B.Tech. degree from the Institute of Technology (IT-BHU), India, all in computer science. Before joining IBM, Dr. Srivastava held various positions at a Silicon Valley startup company, Philips Semiconductor, and TCS; his focus was on data integration and electronic design automation. At IBM, he has worked in data management for bioinformatics and multidevice computing applications. His current focus is on practical planning for business applications and dynamic process/data integration.