ALBERT M. K. CHENG, PhD, received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he held a GTE Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. He is currently an associate professor in the department of computer science at the University of Houston, where he is the founding director of the Real-Time Systems Laboratory. He is the author and coauthor of over sixty refereed publications, and has received numerous awards, including the NSF Career award. He has served as a technical consultant for several organizations, including IBM, and has served on the program committees of many conferences.