Grigor Aslanyan is a theoretical cosmologist who mainly focuses on computational methods for data analysis. He has a PhD in physics from the University of California, San Diego, and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Grigor was born and raised in Armenia. He obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics and computer science at Yerevan State University, Armenia, before moving to California for his PhD studies. He has also worked as a software engineer for 3 years at Ponté Solutions (which was later acquired by Mentor Graphics).
Grigor's research focuses on studying the theory of the early universe by using experimental data from Cosmic Microwave Background radiation and galaxy surveys. His research requires the development and implementation of complex numerical tools used to analyze the data on large computational clusters, with the ultimate goal of learning about the theory of the early universe. Grigor's current research is focused on applying advanced data science and machine learning techniques to improve the data analysis methods in cosmology, making it possible to analyze large amounts of data expected from current and future generation experiments.
He has implemented the publicly available numerical library, Cosmo++, which includes general mathematical and statistical tools for data analysis as well as cosmology-specific packages. The library is written in C++, and it is publicly available at http://cosmopp.com.
Alisson Sol is currently a Group Engineering Manager for Microsoft in Bellevue, Washington. He has many years of experience in software development, having hired and managed several software teams that shipped many applications and frameworks, with focus on image processing, computer vision, ERP, business intelligence, big data, machine learning, and distributed systems. Alisson has been working for Microsoft and Microsoft Research in the USA and UK since 2000, and was previously a cofounder of 3 software companies. He has published several technical papers and has several patent applications and granted patents. He has a B.Sc. in physics and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and General Management training from the University of Cambridge, UK. When not coding, he likes to play soccer or disassemble hardware, put it back to work, and reuse the spare parts elsewhere!
Abhishek Sur has been a Microsoft MVP since 2011. He is currently working as a product head with Insync Tech-Fin Solutions Pvt Ltd. He has profound theoretical insight and years of hands-on experience in different .NET products and languages. Over the years, he has helped developers all over the world through his experience and knowledge. He owns a Microsoft User Group in Kolkata called Kolkata Geeks, and regularly organizes events and seminars in various places to spread .NET awareness. He is a renowned public speaker, voracious reader, and a technology buff. Abhishek's main interest lies in exploring the new realms of .NET technology and coming up with priceless write-ups on the unexplored domains of .NET. He is associated with the Microsoft Insider list on WPF and C# and stays in touch with Product Group teams. He holds a master's degree in computer application along with various other certificates to his credit.
Abhishek is also an author of two books namely, Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5 Expert Cookbook and Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook, Packt Publishing. The books are written on .NET technology with problem - solving approaches and ideals for professionals seeking help for this technology in day-to-day activities.
Radu Tudoran obtained his PhD from ENS/IRISA Rennes, France, by working on cloud big data management on a large scale. He obtained his bachelor's degree in engineering and computer science from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2010. Then, he was awarded an ENS Cachan international scholarship for further studies, and he received his master's degree in 2011 from ENS Cachan, France, as well. Next, he received a Matisse scholarship to pursue a PhD. During his PhD studies, he was part of several projects and collaborations with Microsoft, Argonne, Inria Saclay, and Inria Sophia Antipolis. Within the framework of these collaborations, he spent several months at Argonne and Microsoft Research ATL, Europe. His work focuses on providing high-performance services to manage data, batches, or streams within and across cloud data centers. He is the main architect and technical contributor to the A-Brain project on high-performance processing for bioinformatic applications on Azure Cloud, which is in collaboration with Microsoft Research.