Kurt Geihs is a professor for Distributed Systems at the Berlin University of Technology (TUB) in Germany. His research interests include distributed systems, operating systems, networks and software technology. Current projects focus on QoS management, component-based software and middleware for mobile and ad-hoc networking. Before joining the TUB he was a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. From 1985-1992 he worked for IBM at the IBM European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

Prof. Geihs holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University Aachen, Germany, as well as master degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, California, and from the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany.

Torben Weis is a Ph.D. student at the Berlin University of Technology in Germany. His research interests are in the domain of modeling QoS-aware component systems and the integration of QoS-management in distributed applications. Before joining the TUB, he worked for Trolltech AS in Oslo and used to be a core developer of the open source KDE desktop environment for four years. He holds a master degree (Diplom-Informatiker) in Computer Science from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Andreas Ulbrich is a PhD student at the Berlin University of Technology in Germany. His research interests are middleware, QoS management, and adaptive systems. Before, he worked as a Software Engineer for Siemens AG. Andreas Ulbrich has studied Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany from which he holds a master degree (Diplom-Informatiker) in Computer Science.