Narayanan (Nara) obtained his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NITT) in 1998. Subsequently he joined the PhD program at the University of Southern California (USC), where he worked on mathematical modeling and optimizing network routing problems. After graduating in 2005, Nara joined Yahoo where is currently working on improving search relevance. He is mainly interested in applying mathematical and algorithmic techniques to real world problems. While not working, he loves spending time with his family and playing the piano.