In the good old days Dmytro Gavinsky studied at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and at the University of Calgary. Thanks to the support of his scientific advisers Nader Bshouty, Richard Cleve and John Watrous, he graduated from both institutions and launched his own research activities.

Troy Lee received his PhD in 2006 from the University of Amsterdam, where his advisor was Harry Buhrman. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

Miklos Santha received his Diploma in Mathematics in 1979 from Eötvös University in Budapest, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1983 from the Université Paris 7. His advisor was Jacques Stern. After having been a CNRS researcher between 1988 and 2021 he is currently Research Director emeritus at the Université Paris Cité. He is also Research Professor and Principal Investigator at CQT, National University of Singapore.

Swagato Sanyal graduated from TIFR, Mumbai in 2017; his advisor was Prahladh Harsha. The work presented in this article was partly carried out when he was a postdoctoral fellow at Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.