Hassan Gomaa, Professor of Software Engineering at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is an internationally acknowledged authority on the software design of distributed and real-time systems. Hassan's career in software engineering spans both industry and academia, and he develops concurrent, distributed, and real-time applications in industry; designs software development methods and applies them to real-world problems; and teaches short courses to professional software engineers around the world. He has a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from University College, London, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Imperial College, London.