George and I meet at a conference at UCLA in 2000 where we were
introduced by my dear friend Konstantin Oskolkov. The conversation
was over beer and at some point George mentioned that LSU where he
was doing his graduate studies after coming from Odessa, Ukraine
does not have the type of harmonic analysis he is interested in.
Oskolkov immediately suggested to George that he transfer to the
University of Missouri and within a couple of weeks George applied,
got an acceptance and agreed to come to Missouri to work with me.
Yurii Latushkin, who was the graduate director at the University of
Missouri played a very important role in making this happen.
George wrote a very strong Ph.D. dissertation, but in the middle of
his studies he started thinking about working in industry.
Eventually George approached me about this and I believe he was
pleasantly surprised when I was very receptive to this idea and
offered to help in any way I can. Eventually this led to the
conversation between George and my brother Sam who hired him to work
in retail analytics. A few years later, they started Prognos Inc
with Yogesh Kulkarni, and they have been working together even
since.
George is a close family friend. We frequently visit each other
whenever an opportunity arises.