Editorial

Dr. Linda Schmidt received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Iowa State University for work in Industrial Engineering, specializing in queuing theory and organization research. Dr. Schmidt joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1995. She has been very active in teaching the junior level product development course and has since co-authored two editions of the course textbook. She earned a joint appointment with the University’s Institute for Systems Research in 1999. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001. Dr. Schmidt’s research interests in design led to her active roles in the ASME’s DTM Community and the NSF’s Open Workshop on Decision-Based Design. She has been named the Paper Chair for the 2003 DTM Conference. Dr. Schmidt’s interest in research on training for engineering project teams has resulted in the founding of BESTEAMS, a research group for the improvement of training materials for engineering project teams, and presentation of research in ASEE Conferences and publications.

Dr. Gordon R. Pennock received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis, in June 1983. He joined the School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana in August of the same year as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1989. He is a Fellow of ASME and is active at all levels of the society; including student, regional, and national sections. He is the Student Section Advisor for the ASME student chapter at Purdue University, the College Relations Chairman and Senior Representative on Student Section Committee for Region VI, and a member of the Board on Student Affairs. Gordon is active in many areas of mechanical design with a special interest in kinematics and dynamics of machines. He has received numerous awards including the Outstanding Student Section Advisor Award, the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award, and the Ferdinand Freudenstein Award at the Fourth National Applied Mechanisms and Robotics Conference. His other activities include archival publications, conference speaker, workshop organizer, and conference session organizer. He is a Chartered Engineer with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (United Kingdom), and a member of several engineering societies, including IEEE, SAE, and SME. He is also a member of the honorary societies Sigma Xi and Pi Tau Sigma.

Dr. Constantinos Mavroidis is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, since July 2001. He was an Assistant Professor at the same department from 1996 to 2001. Constantinos received the Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1988 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering/Robotics from the University of Paris VI, France, in 1989 and 1993 respectively. From 1993 to 1996 he was a Post-Doctoral Associate with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University (summer 1990), a Visiting Researcher at the University of Tokyo (spring 1991), and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University (2001–2002). He has received numerous prestigious awards including a Best Paper Award at the 1994 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, the 1998 ASME Freudenstein/General Motors Young Investigators Award, and the 2000 National Science Foundation Early Career Award. He has authored and co-authored more than 85 journal and conference papers and book contributions. Dr. Mavroidis’ research interests include design, dynamics, and control of robotic and mechatronic systems, development of smart material based advanced actuators, and analysis and synthesis of spatial mechanisms. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Chair of the IEEE Central Jersey/Princeton Chapter of the Robotics and Automation Society, Chair of the Robotics Technical Panel of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division and Chair of the Permanent Commission on Communications of IFToMM.