Robert F. Berry  IBM Software Group, Hursley Park, Hursley SO21 2JN, UK (brobertuk.ibm.com). Dr. Berry joined IBM in 1987 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York, to work in the area of systems performance. In that role, he has contributed to the performance measurement and improvement of several IBM operating systems, including MVS™, VM, AIX^®, and OS/2^®. In 1995 his focus changed to Java and to the performance of several Java Virtual Machine implementations. He held this role until 2004, when he was named CTO for Messaging Technology. He presently leads an effort within the IBM Software Group exploring the opportunities and challenges for introducing new timeliness qualities of service into middleware. He earned his Ph.D. in computer sciences from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. In 1999 he was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology, and was appointed an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2000. He was elected Vice President for the IBM Academy of Technology in 2005. He is a member of the Software Group Architecture Board steering committee. He serves as the IBM Partnership Executive for Imperial College, London, where he is also a Visiting Professor and a member of several Advisory Boards.

Paul E. McKenney  IBM Linux Technology Center, 15350 SW Koll Parkway, Beaverton, OR 97006 (paulmcklinux.vnet.ibm.com). Dr. McKenney is an IBM Distinguished Engineer in the Open Systems Development department and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. In this position he has worked on SMP, NUMA, and RCU algorithms for Linux and AIX. He is currently working on synchronization primitives within the Linux kernel for real-time multi-core/multi-threaded systems. Before joining IBM he worked on similar algorithms for DYNIX/ptx at Sequent Computer Systems, on packet-radio and Internet protocols at SRI International, and on real-time systems and business applications as a self-employed contract programmer. He received B.S. degrees in computer science and in mechanical engineering in 1981 from Oregon State University, an M.S. degree in computer science in 1988, also from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering in 2004 from Oregon Health and Sciences University. He holds more than 20 patents and has published more than 50 papers.

Francis N. Parr  IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 10598 (fnparrus.ibm.com). Dr. Parr is a Research Staff Member working on messaging, event, and real-time integration middleware and tooling. He is the recipient of IBM Research awards for architecture contributions to the built-in Java Message Server in IBM WebSphere and for work on IBM Parallel DB2^®. He is also involved in scalable algorithms for financial services applications. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University and lectured at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University, before joining the IBM Research Division.