Naoki Abe  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (nabeus.ibm.com). Dr. Abe, a research staff member in the Data Analytics Research group since June 2001, is engaged in research in machine learning and data mining. After graduating from the Massachusettus Institute of Technology in 1984 with B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science, he joined the Watson Research Center. He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in computer and information science in 1989. He served as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz from 1989 until 1990, when he joined NEC Research Laboratories in Japan. From 1998 to 2000, he served as an adjunct associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Dr. Abe has served on program committees of various professional conferences and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and Data Mining and the Knowledge Discovery Journal. His current research interests are in the applications of advanced machine learning methods to business analytics and optimization.

Rama Akkiraju  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 10532 (akkirajuus.ibm.com). Since joining IBM in 1995, Ms. Akkiraju, a Senior Technical Staff Member at the Watson Research Center, has been involved in research on agent-based decision-support systems, electronic marketplaces, and business process integration technologies. Her research interests are in the application of artificial intelligence techniques to solving business problems and semantic Web services. She received the INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner prize in 1998 for her work on scheduling algorithms for the paper industry. She has a master's degree in computer science from New York University and an M.B.A degree from the Stern School of Business at the same university.

Stephen Buckley  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (sbuckleyus.ibm.com). Dr. Buckley, a research staff member since 1987, is currently the liason between IBM Research and IBM Corporate Development. Prior to that, he managed a group in the Mathematical Sciences department of IBM Research. His research interests include supply chain management, simulation, and business process management. Dr. Buckley received a Ph.D. degree in computer science from MIT in 1987. He also received an M.S. degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University in 1978, and a B.S. degree in applied mathematics and computer science from Florida State University in 1977.

Markus Ettl  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (msettlus.ibm.com). Dr. Ettl manages the Supply Chain Analytics and Architecture group of the Mathematical Sciences Department. He received his doctoral degree in computer science in 1995 from Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany. Since joining IBM in 1995 as a research staff member, he has applied mathematical methods to supply chain-management problems and holds several patents in this field. His current research interests lie in decision support for production systems and logistics networks, and in sense-and-respond systems. Dr. Ettl received the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award in 1999. He also received two IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards and several IBM Research Division awards.

Pu Huang  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (puhuangus.ibm.com). Dr. Huang, a research staff member, is involved in applying intelligent data-mining techniques and sophisticated decision-support algorithms to the development of sense-and-respond systems for business decision making in large-scale, distributed environments. His current interests are in supply chain management, stochastic optimization, machine learning, and data mining. Dr. Huang has an M.S. degree from the School of Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dharmashankar Subramanian  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (dharmashus.ibm.com). Dr. Subramanian, a research staff member in the Mathematical Sciences department, is involved in research in operational risk modeling, portfolio analysis, and stochastic optimization. His research interests include mathematical modeling, mathematical programming, business and process optimization, process control of linear, nonlinear, and hybrid systems, continuous and discrete event simulation, stochastic optimization, and risk analysis. He received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Purdue University, where he focused on combinatorial decision making under uncertainty. Before joining IBM, he was a senior research scientist at Honeywell Laboratories in Minneapolis, where he conducted basic and applied research in supply-side energy portfolio optimization, cogeneration-based integrated energy systems, aircraft trajectory optimization, wireless sensor networks, and nonlinear process control.

Fateh Tipu  IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (fatehus.ibm.com). Since joining IBM in 1991, Mr. Tipu, a senior engineer, has been involved in the development of computer-aided-design tools for logic design and, more recently, in research on data-mining systems. He received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. Mr. Tipu's awards include an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award and an IBM Research Division award. He is a senior member of IEEE.