Manik Surtani is a core R&D engineer at JBoss and project lead on JBoss Cache. He has a background in artificial intelligence and neural networks, a field he left behind when he moved from academic circles to the commercial world. Since then, he's been working with Java-related technologies, first for a startup, focusing on knowledge management and information exchange. He later worked for a large London-based consultancy as a tech lead focused on e-commerce applications on large J2EE and peer-to-peer technology. Manik is a strong proponent of open source development methodologies, ethos, and collaborative processes, and often speaks at Java User Groups around the world.