David B. Kirk
is known for major
contributions to graphics,
hardware, and algorithms.
Before pursuing his Ph.D. at
Caltech, he earned B.S. and
M.S. degrees in mechanical
engineering from MIT and
worked at Raster Technologies
and Hewlett-Packard's Apollo
Systems Division. After
completing his doctorate, he
served as chief scientist and
head of technology at Crystal
Dynamics. In 1997, he became
Chief Scientist at NVIDIA. Dr.
Kirk has received numerous
honors including the IEEE
Seymour Cray Computer
Engineering Award and
ACM SIGGRAPH Computer
Graphics Achievement
Award. He is a member of
the U.S. National Academy of
Engineering.

Izzat El Hajj
is an Assistant Professor
of Computer Science at
the American University
of Beirut. His research
focuses on leveraging
accelerator architectures
to tackle challenging
computations, with a
focus on GPU computing,
processing-in-memory,
and performance
modeling. He earned his
Ph.D. in Electrical and
Computer Engineering at
the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
He has received the
Dan Vivoli Endowed
Fellowship (UIUC) and the
Distinguished Graduate
Award from the American
University of Beirut.