Thomas Stern is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, New York, and has served as department chair and technical director of Columbia's Center for Telecommunications Research. A Life Fellow of the IEEE, he holds several patents in networking and has published widely in the field. He has also been a consultant to a number of large companies such as IBM, Lucent, GTE, and Telcordia Technologies.
Krishna Bala is currently CEO and President of Xtellus, a company that designs and manufactures advanced optical components and systems for dynamic optical networks. Krishna was the co-founder and CTO of Tellium, a successful optical networking company. He holds nine patents. Previous positions also include senior research scientist at Bell Communications Research. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Columbia University, where he published one of the earliest dissertations in routing algorithms for optical networks.