Dr. Angappa Gunasekaran is a Professor of Operations Management and the Chairperson of the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at the Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (USA). He has a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay). Dr. Gunasekaran has held academic positions at Brunel University (UK), Monash University (Australia), the University of Vaasa (Finland), the University of Madras (India) and the University of Toronto, Laval University, and Concordia University (Canada). He is teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in operations management and management science. Dr. Gunasekaran has received Thomas J. Higginson Award for Excellence in Teaching (2001-2002) within the Charlton College of Business. He has over 200 articles published/forthcoming in 40 different peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Gunasekaran is on the Editorial Board of over 20 peer-reviewed journals which include some prestigious journals such as Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Planning and Control, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Technovation, and Computers in Industry: An International Journal. Dr. Gunasekaran is involved with several national and international collaborative projects that are funded by both private and government agencies. Dr. Gunasekaran has edited a couple of books that include Knowledge and Information Technology Management: Human and Social Perspectives, (Idea Group Publishing) and Agile Manufacturing: The 21st Century Competitive Strategy (Elsevier). Dr. Gunasekaran is the Editor of Benchmarking: An International Journal and the North-American Editor of the International Journal of Enterprise Network Management. He has edited special issues for a number of highly reputed journals. Dr. Gunasekaran is currently interested in researching benchmarking, agile manufacturing, management information systems, e-procurement, and competitiveness of SMEs, information technology/ systems evaluation, performance measures and metrics in new economy, technology management, logistics, and supply chain management. He actively serves on several university committees. He is the Editor-In-Chief of several international journals in the areas of Operations Management and Information Systems. Dr. Gunasekaran is also the Director of Business Innovation Research Center (BIRC).Omar Khalil is currently a Professor of Information Systems, Quantitative Methods & Information Systems (QMIS) Department, College of Business Administration, Kuwait University. He has a PhD in Information Systems from the University of North Texas. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Global Information Management, Journal of Organizational and End- User Computing, Information Resources management Journal, International Journal of Production and Economics, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of informing Science, and International journal of Enterprise Information Systems. His research interest includes information systems effectiveness, global information systems, information quality, and knowledge management. He has taught many graduate and undergraduate information systems courses in a number of universities in Egypt, USA, and Kuwait. He has served as the program committee member of various international conferences and reviewer for various international journals. Syed Mahbubur Rahman is currently a Professor at the Minnesota State
University, Mankato, USA. He worked for several other institutions around the
world, including NDSU in USA (1999), Monash University in Australia (1993-98),
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET, 1982-92), and Ganz
Electric Works in Budapest (1980-82). He was the head of the department of
Computer Science and Engineering at BUET from 1986 to 1992. He is co-chairing
and is involved as a program/organizing member in a number of international
conferences. He obtained his doctoral degree from Budapest Technical University
in 1980. He supervised more than 30 research projects leading to mastersí and PhD
degrees. His research interests include electronic commerce systems, multimedia
computing and communications, image processing and retrieval, computational
intelligence, pattern recognition, distributed processing, and security. He has published 100+ research papers in his areas of interest. He has published four edited
books on e-commerce, internet commerce, software agents, multimedia, and networking. He also edited the special issue of IEEE Multimedia on distance education.