George A. Olah, PhD, is the 1994 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and the winner of numerous other prestigious awards, including the American Chemical Society'sPriestley Medal, Award for Petroleum Chemistry, Award for Creativity in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, and Roger Adams Medal, the Michaelson-Morley Award, and the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists. Professor Olah has published more than 1300 scientific papers, holds over 100 patents, and has served as coauthor or author of more than twenty books and monographs. He is currently Director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Distinguished Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.

Douglas A. Klumpp, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Northern Illinois University in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the Olah research group, Professor Klumpp initiated his own research into the chemistry of reactive electrophilic systems; he has applied this chemistry to the development of synthetic methods and the study of reaction mechanisms.