Shankar Ananthakrishnan I was born in Pondicherry, India but grew up mostly in Bombay (Mumbai) and Ahmedabad, where I attended primary and high school, respectively. After graduating from high school in 1998, I obtained a B. Eng. degree (major: Electronics & Telecommunication) from the University of Mumbai in 2002. From 2002 through 2004, I pursued an M.Sc. degree at USC, majoring in Electrical Engineering. Since then, I have been working towards my Ph.D. within the Signal and Image Processing Institute of the Electrical Engineering department at USC, qualifying for candidacy in March 2007.