The design was proposed in a report by Lars Knudsen in 1998, and was submitted to the AES contest by Richard Outerbridge (who notes that Knudsen had presented the design at the SAC conference in 1997).
Lars von Trier | Lars Ulrich | MC Lars | Lars Forssell | Lars Danielsson | Lars Saabye Christensen | Lars Løkke Rasmussen | Lars Levi Laestadius | Lars Bystøl | Lars Onsager | Povl Riis-Knudsen | Morrison-Knudsen | Lars Winnerbäck | Lars Petrus | Lars-Olof Mattsson | Lars Norén | Lars Lindberg Christensen | Lars Lilholt | Lars Leksell | Lars Larson | Lars Knutzon | Lars Jonson Haukaness | Lars Hirschfeld | Lars Gullin | Lars Frölander | Lars Werner | Lars Tolumnius | Lars Schneider | Lars Porsena | Lars Olausson |
The authors say that VEST security margins are inline with the guidelines proposed by Lars Knudsen in the paper "Some thoughts on the AES process" and the more conservative guidelines recently proposed by Nicolas Courtois in the paper “Cryptanalysis of Sfinks”.
Gus Van Sant and producer Scott Rudin were executive producers on the project, in addition to producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy.