[layout] LaTeX: Multiple authors in a two-column article

I'm kind of new to LaTeX and I am having a bit of a problem..

I am using a twocolumn layout for my article. There are four authors involved with different affiliations, and I am trying to list all of them under the title so they span the entire width of the page (all on the same level). It should be similar to this:

                  Article Title

auth1FN auth1LN     2  ... 3    auth4FN auth4LN
 department            ...        department
   school              ...          school
  email@edu            ...         email@edu


     Abstract                .....................
....................         .....................
....................         .....................
....................         .....................

Currently I have something along the lines:

\documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{multicol}

\begin{document}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\title{Article Title}
\author{
    First Last\\
    Department\\
    school\\
    email@edu
  \and
    First Last\\
    ...
}
\date{}
\maketitle
\end{multicols}

\begin{abstract}
...
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}
...

\end{document}

The problem is that the authors are not displayed all on the same level, instead I get the first three next to each other, followed by the last one underneath.

Is there way to achieve what I want? Also if possible, how can I customize the font of the affiliations (to be smaller and in italic)?

This question is related to layout latex tex

The answer is


What about using a tabular inside \author{}, just like in IEEE macros:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Hello, World}
\author{
\begin{tabular}[t]{c@{\extracolsep{8em}}c} 
I. M. Author  & M. Y. Coauthor \\
My Department & Coauthor Department \\ 
My Institute & Coauthor Institute \\
email, address & email, address
\end{tabular}
}
\maketitle    
\end{document}

This will produce two columns authors with any documentclass.

Results:

enter image description here