Gil Syswerda received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from the University of Michigan in 1987, where he studied artificial intelligence in general and genetic algorithms in particular under John Holland, their inventor. In 1988, he joined the intelligent systems group at BBN Systems and Technologies, where he worked on scheduling and machine vision systems. In1993, he co-founded Optimax Systems to produce commercial production scheduling systems. Optimax was purchased by i2 Technologies in 1997. Mr. Syswerda is currently a strategic technology and business advisor to i2.