Matt Kraning is a CTO, Cortex at Palo Alto Networks at Palo Alto Networks. Colleagues describe him as "Matt was one of the most intelligent, resourceful, and broad students I knew at Stanford. He came to the electrical engineering department from a physics background but learned the math and engineering concepts very quickly and to a deep level. Our research group dealt mostly with theoretical questions about digital communication, which Matt is more than capable of contributing to. But he also has interest in relevant short-term achievements, which has led him to branch out to other applied research areas like optimization."