Contributors

The following people and companies were among those who contributed materials to the .NET Framework Academic Resource Kit.

Note: The biographies herein were provided by the respective contributors, authors, or their publishers.

A

Ben Albahari is cofounder of Genamics, a provider of components for C# programmers, as well as software for DNA and protein sequence analysis. He is author of A Comparative Overview of C#, an early and widely cited comparison of C# with C/C++ and Java. Ben currently works as a Program Manager in the .NET Compact Framework team at Microsoft.

Contributions: C# Essentials, 2nd Edition

B

Andy Baron is a senior consultant at MCW Technologies, a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1995, and a contributing editor for Advisor Media and Pinnacle Publications. Andy is co-author of the Microsoft Access Developers Guide to SQL Server (Sams), and he writes and presents courseware for Application Developers Training Co.

Contributions: Access Cookbook

Nick Benton is a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, working in the Programming Principles and Tools group.

He has been in Cambridge since 1984, when he came up to read Mathematics at Pembroke College. He then took the postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science and stayed in the Computer Laboratory to do his PhD. This was followed by an SERC Research Fellowship and then by a Research Associateship on the ESPRIT Basic Research Action LOMAPS. He has been a Bye-Fellow of Queens' College since 1995.

From July 1996 to August 1998, Nick was the Senior Research Scientist at the Cambridge R&D Lab of Persimmon IT, Inc., where he led a group which (amongst other things) developed MLj, the Standard ML to Java bytecode compiler. He joined Microsoft in September 1998.

Nick’s research interests include logic, semantics, functional programming, static analysis and optimizing compilers.

Contributions: Polyphonic C#

C

Luca Cardelli was born in Montecatini Terme, Italy, studied at the University of Pisa (until 1979), and has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Edinburgh (1982). He worked at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, from 1982 to 1985, and at Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, from 1985 to 1997, before assuming his current position at Microsoft Research Ltd, in Cambridge UK.

His main interests are in type theory and operational semantics, mostly for applications to language design, semantics, and implementation. He implemented the first compiler for ML (the most popular typed functional language) and one of the earliest direct-manipulation user-interface editors. He was a member of the Modula-3 design committee, and has designed a few experimental languages, of which the latest is Obliq: a distributed higher-order scripting language. His more protracted research activity has been in establishing the semantic and type-theoretic foundations of object-oriented languages. Currently he is working on global and mobile computation issues, in particular on Mobile Ambients.

Contributions: Polyphonic C#

David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates and the best-selling author of Understanding ActiveX and OLE (Microsoft Press, 1996) and Understanding Microsoft Windows 2000 Distributed Services (Microsoft Press, 2000). Through his keynotes, seminars, writing, and consulting, David helps IT professionals around the world understand, use, market, and make better decisions about enterprise software technologies.

Contributions: Understanding .NET: A Tutorial and Analysis

D

Peter Drayton is an independent consultant, helping early-stage companies define and build systems that take advantage of technologies such as .NET, SOAP, XML, and COM+. Peter is also an instructor for DevelopMentor, where he teaches Essential C#.NET. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, Peter now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Julie. He spends his spare time researching .NET and tinkering with a small flotilla of computers cluttering up their apartment.

Contributions: C# Essentials, 2nd Edition

E

F

Derek Ferguson is a world-renowned author, speaker, and developer who has been recognized throughout the IT industry for his work. He is Chief Technology Evangelist for PocketDBA Systems, a pioneer and leader in the wireless database management industry.

In 1996, Ferguson began work for a small, Chicago-based Internet startup known as InterAccess. Later that year, with his assistance, they became the first company in the world to sell commercial Internet access via a previously almost unheard of technology: DSL. As a result of this success, he was quickly promoted to Head of Development at InterAccess.

Ferguson has accrued numerous certifications as well as book writing and speaking credits. He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), a Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP), and a Certified Lotus Principal Professional (CLPP). His book credits include such popular titles as Broadband Internet Access for Dummies, MCSD Solution Architectures, and Debugging ASP. He has spoken at numerous international developers conferences, including Wireless DevCon 2000 in San Jose and JavaOne 2001 in San Francisco.

Ferguson graduated Summa Cum Laude from DePaul University with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Computer Science.

Contributions: Mobile .NET

Cédric Fournet joined Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K., in August 1998.

Before that, he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1992, worked for a year on deductive databases at BULL, obtained a second engineering degree from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1995, then did a PhD in computer science at INRIA Rocquencourt.

During his PhD, he applied some concurrency theory to model distributed programming: he proposed a variant of the pi calculus as the core of a distributed programming language. He used this calculus to model the behavior of programs and implementations, in particular agent-based mobility, partial failure, and security. He also wrote the distributed runtime of a prototype implementation of this language.

Contributions: Polyphonic C#, Stack Inspection: Theory and Variants

G

Ken Getz is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies and splits his time between programming, writing, and training. He specializes in tools and applications written in Visual Studio .NET and Visual Basic. Ken is co-author of best-selling several books, including Access 2002 Developer's Handbook with Paul Litwin and Mike Gunderloy, Visual Basic Language Developer's Handbook with Mike Gilbert, and VBA Developer's Handbook with Mike Gilbert (Sybex). He co-wrote several training courses for Application Developer's Training Company, including VB.NET, ASP.NET, Access 2000 and 97, Visual Basic 6, and Visual Basic 5 seminars. He has also recorded video training for AppDev covering VB.NET, ASP.NET, Visual Basic 6, Access 2000, and Access 97. Ken is a frequent speaker at technical conferences and spoken often at Microsoft's Tech-Ed conference. Ken's also a technical editor for Access-VB-SQL Advisor magazine and a columnist for Informant Publications' asp.netPRO magazine.

Contributions: Access Cookbook

Andy Gordon is a Researcher with Microsoft Research, Cambridge, in the Programming Principles and Tools group. Before joining Microsoft in 1997, he was a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Contributions: Stack Inspection: Theory and Variants, Typing a Multi-Language Intermediate Code (condensed version), Typing a Multi-Language Intermediate Code (extended version)

John Gough has been writing compilers for more than 20 years. He is one of the elite group of compiler developers invited by Microsoft to create demonstration compilers for .NET. Gough's Gardens Point Modula-2 compilers were produced for every major computer architecture of the 1990s, and have been widely used worldwide. More recently, he has written compilers for the object-oriented language Component Pascal, targeting the Java Virtual Machine.

Contributions: Compiling for the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), Component Pascal, Stacking them up: A Comparison of Virtual Machines, Technical Overview of the Commmon Language Runtime

Dave Grundgeiger is a consultant at Tara Software, Inc., in Madison, Wisconsin, where he spends his days immersed in cool technologies. Dave specializes in the design and development of multi-tier vertical market business solutions using Visual Basic .NET, Visual C# .NET, IIS, COM+, and SQL Server. Dave's research interests include artificial intelligence, with particular interests in both natural language processing and robotics. He is especially interested in AI techniques that facilitate human-like interaction with computers. Dave has written for MSDN Magazine and C/C++ Users Journal and is the author of O'Reilly's Programming Visual Basic .NET and CDO & MAPI Programming with Visual Basic.

Contributions: Programming Visual Basic .NET

Eric Gunnerson is a software design engineer in Microsoft’s Visual C++ QA group and a member of the C# design team. In his professional career, he has worked primarily on database products and tools, and is proud that nearly half the companies he has worked for remain in business.

Contributions: A Programmer's Introduction to C#, Second Edition

H

Michael Halvorson is the author or coauthor of 20 computer books, including Microsoft Office XP Inside Out, Visual Basic 6.0 Deluxe Learning Edition, and Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Step by Step. Michael has a B.S. in Computer Science from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. A former employee at Microsoft Corporation, where he was a technical editor, an acquisitions editor, and a localization manager from 1985 to 1993, Michael currently divides his time developing innovative software solutions for Microsoft Office and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and teaching European history courses at colleges in the Pacific Northwest.

Contributions: Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Step by Step

Dan Hurwitz is the president of Sterling Solutions, Inc., where for nearly two decades, he has been providing contract programming and database development to a wide variety of clients.

Contributions: Programming ASP.NET

I

J

Jon Jagger is an independent software trainer/designer/consultant specializing in Visual C# .NET, C++, Java, C, OO, patterns, design, and general programming. His work on Microsoft Visual C# Step by Step was done through Content Master Ltd, a technical authoring company in the United Kingdom. Jon is a UK C++ standards panel member and a regular contributor to the ACCU Overload journal. His interests include training excellence, design, simplicity, problem solving, and Monty Python (which he says is required knowledge for all software developers). Jon, his wife Natalie and their three small children (Ellie, Penny, and Patrick) live in a delightful 104-year-old house overlooking a 7-acre field of barley in a village called Trull (population totals 300).

Contributions: Microsoft Visual C# Step by Step

Edward Jezierski is a Program Manager at the Prescriptive Architecture Guidance group in Microsoft headquarters, in Redmond. He is responsible for architecting and developing guides and the Application Blocks for .NET. He spends his time with customers, developers, support personnel, solution providers, and the .NET teams identifying recurring issues and the optimal solutions for them. Edward also does tech reviews for industry authors and MSDN publications, and has been an industry event speaker and author since 1997. In his free time he enjoys skydiving and researching evolutionary systems.

Contributions: Microsoft .NET Explained: Cambio de paradigma a la computación distribuida a través de Internet, Microsoft .NET Explained: Paradigm Shift to Distributed Computing Over the Internet, Microsoft .NET Explained: ¿Por qué Microsoft .NET?, Microsoft .NET Explained: ¿Qué es Microsoft .NET?, Microsoft .NET Explained: What is Microsoft .NET?, Microsoft .NET Explained: Why Microsoft .NET?

K

Andrew Kennedy is a Researcher with Microsoft Research in the Cambridge Group. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 1996, where the subject of his thesis was a polymorphic type system and inference algorithm for units of measure. He then worked for a year as a researcher in the Semantics, Proof and Abstract Interpretation group at the École Polytechnique near Paris. Most recently Andrew was a research scientist at Persimmon IT, Inc. where he co-developed MLj, a compiler for the functional programming language Standard ML that generates Java class files and supports typesafe interlanguage working with Java.

Andrew's research interests include programming language semantics, type systems, and optimizing compilation for advanced languages. More specifically he is interested in effect-based compiler transformations, whole-program compilation, type systems for modules, high-level language interop, and declarative design patterns. Andrew does not believe in object-oriented programming.

Contributions: Design and Implementation of Generics for the .NET Common Language Runtime

L

Hoang Q. Lam is a senior developer at CrossTier.com and an instructor in web development at George Washington University through DevXpert. At CrossTier.com, he specializes in developing B2B web sites using Microsoft tools.

Contributions: .NET Framework Essentials

Tim Landgrave is President of eAdvantage, Inc., a Microsoft .NET architecture, design, development and training company. Tim was the founder, President and technical visionary of two prior Microsoft-centric consulting companies – KiZAN Technologies and Vobix Corporation. In 1995, KiZAN was named Microsoft’s first ever Solution Provider Partner of the Year. Under Tim’s guidance, KiZAN was known nationally for their engineering and development solutions. Vobix Corporation was one of the first Microsoft-based Application Services Providers and while there Tim architected and Vobix developed a comprehensive provisioning platform for Microsoft Enterprise products capable of supporting hundreds of companies and thousands of users on a small number of networked servers. Tim has been the MSDN Regional Director for Kentucky and Southern Ohio since 1996. In this capacity, he works with regional companies on training and architecture engagements that help them to adopt new Microsoft technologies. Tim’s also a highly read CNET/TechRepublic contributor where he’s been writing regular columns for CIOs, ASPs and .NET architects for almost three years. His columns are read by over 20,000 people each week.

Contributions: Interprocess Communication Standards and Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure

Sebastian Lange is currently Program Manager for Security on the Common Language Runtime team. He has worked on the Common Language Runtime for two years, prior to which he has done work in Artificial Intelligence and Data Base design at Microsoft. He holds degrees in Philosophy and Computer Science from Macalester College and has done some graduate work at the University of Minnesota.

Contributions: An Overview of Security in the .NET Framework

Jesse Liberty is a practicing computer consultant, trainer, and best-selling author. Specializing in object-oriented analysis and design, and C/C++, VB, ASP, and web programming, Jesse is also the author of Programming C#, 2nd Edition from O'Reilly.

Contributions: Programming ASP.NET, Programming C#

Stanley B. Lippman is Architect with the Visual C++ development team at Microsoft. Previously, he served as a Distinguished Consultant at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). Stan spent more than twelve years at Bell Laboratories, where he worked with Bjarne Stroustrup on the original C++ implementation and the Foundation research project. After Bell Laboratories, Stan worked at Disney Feature Animation, originally as principal software engineer, then as software technical director on Fantasia 2000.

Contributions: C# Primer: A Practical Approach

Paul Litwin is the president of Litwin Consulting, providing development, mentoring, and training in ASP, ASP.NET, Visual Basic, SQL Server, XML, Microsoft Access, and related technologies. Paul was the founding editor of the Smart Access Newsletter and recently became the editor-in-chief of asp.netPRO Magazine. He is the author of a number of books, articles, and training materials on Access, VBA, Web development, ASP, and ASP.NET. Paul is one of the founders of Deep Training, a developer-owned training company providing training on Microsoft .NET. He is the conference chair of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections and Office Developer Connections and speaks regularly at other industry events, including Microsoft TechEd and Microsoft Office Deployment and Development Conference.

Contributions: Access Cookbook

M

Alex Mackman is a Principal Technologist at Content Master Ltd., where he creates developer-focused courseware and technical content. Alex has 15 years' experience in the software development industry and has designed, created and delivered training and consultancy on many aspects of Windows development. He is currently developing .NET courseware, and .NET architecture guidance papers for Microsoft Corporation.

J. D. Meier based in Redmond, is a Program Manager on the Prescriptive Architecture Guidance (PAG) team, focusing on distributed applications built with .NET.

Dr. Erik Meijer is a Program Manager in the Microsoft Common Language Runtime group, and adjunct professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Oregon Graduate Institute. Prior to joining Microsoft, while at Utrecht University, Dr Meijer worked closely with researchers and developers of Microsoft and the Oregon Graduate Institute to integrate the lazy functional languages Haskell and Mondrian with the .NET framework.

Contributions: A Programmer's View of .NET?, An Introduction to C#, ASP.NET for Programmers, Mondrian for .NET">, Scripting .NET using Mondrian, Technical Overview of the Commmon Language Runtime, What's In A Name: .NET as a Component Framework

David Mercer is President of AFC Computer Services, a Web site and Database design company. Dave has been designing databases since 1993 and Web sites since 1995, using a variety of languages including Paradox Application Language, PERL, HTML, VBA, VBScript, and SQL.

Contributions: ASP.NET: A Beginner's Guide

Brad Merrill works as a software engineer in the .NET Framework Integration team at Microsoft. He previously worked as a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation and Sybase. His areas of expertise are in distributed systems, transaction processing, operating systems, and compiler technology. Brad lives in Redmond, Washington, and is an avid tournament chess player and bridge player.

Contributions: C# Essentials, 2nd Edition

N

Dr. Anne Nelson is a professor in the Earl N. Phillips School of Business, Department of Computer Information Systems, at High Point University, a top-tier regional liberal arts University in High Point, North Carolina. She holds a Doctor of Business Administration in Management with concentration in Information Systems and has completed post-doctoral studies in electronic commerce, Web site development, and telecommunications at Stanford University. She has also authored a number of distance education IT-based courses and has been a contributing author and reviewer on numerous Web technology titles. She a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW).

Contributions: Building Electronic Commerce in the .NET Environment

William H. M. Nelson III is President of Nelson Management Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in management information systems and collaborative technologies. He is a member of the adjunct faculty of High Point University, a top-tier regional liberal arts University in High Point, North Carolina. Mr. Nelson has doctoral work in Organization and Management with specialization in Information Technology and holds an M.S. in the same discipline area and concentration. He brings a wealth of IT industry experience in systems and programming and is a former newspaper owner and publisher.

Contributions: Building Electronic Commerce in the .NET Environment

Gary Nutt is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research, teaching and writing are in the areas of Software and Systems with particular focus on distributed systems; mobile computing; resource management; soft real-time; modeling and performance; collaboration technology; embedded systems; object-oriented design and programming. He received his B.A. from Boise State University and holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He is the author of several books; most recently Operating Systems: A Modern Approach (2nd Edition) and Kernel Projects for Linux.

Contributions: Distributed Programming Runtime Systems: Inside the CLR

O

Andy Olsen is a freelance consultant engaged in training, consultancy, and development services in C++, C#, and related .NET Framework technologies. His work on this book was done through Content Master, Inc. Andy has been developing Microsoft applications for more than 15 years, and has been using C++ since the late 1980's. Andy is a keen football and rugby supporter, and also enjoys running and skiing -- but not all at the same time.

Contributions: Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Step by Step

Online Training Solutions, Inc. is a traditional and electronic publishing company dedicated to helping clients identify needs and implement solutions, including development tools, training materials, documentation, and web sites. OTSI brings talent and time-tested expertise to your project, whether delivered online, on CD-ROM, in print, or in the classroom.

The talented team at OTSI includes experienced project managers, production managers, writers, editors, graphic artists, programmers, and testers. The team is efficient, enthusiastic, and committed to client satisfaction.

OTSI provided project management, production, graphic, programming, and testing services for the .NET Framework Academic Resource Kit.

P

Dr Nigel Perry is a Senior Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Nigel's main research for the last decade, or two, has been studying and designing programming languages - of all paradigms. Over the last two years, the first on sabbatical in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Nigel as been part of the Mondrian team and has worked with the support of Microsoft to develop the language for the .NET platform. Nigel has worked in Universities in the UK and New Zealand and spends too much of his "spare" time advocating cycling.

Contributions: Mondrian for .NET, Scripting .NET using Mondrian

Charles Petzold is a full-time freelance writer who has been programming for Microsoft Windows since 1985 and writing about Windows programming for nearly as long. He wrote the very first magazine article about Windows programming for the December 1986 issue of Microsoft Systems Journal. His book Programming Windows (first published by Microsoft Press in 1988 and currently in its fifth edition) is one of the best selling programming books of all time. In May 1994, Petzold was one of only seven people (and the only writer) to be given a Windows Pioneer Award from Windows Magazine and Microsoft Corporation for his contribution to the success of Microsoft Windows. He is also the author of a unique introduction to the inner workings of computers entitled Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

Contributions: Programming Microsoft Windows with C#

Simon Peyton Jones, MA, MBCS, CEng, graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in 1980. After two years in industry, he spent seven years as a lecturer at University College London, and nine years as a professor at Glasgow University, before moving to Microsoft Research in 1998.

His main research interest is in functional programming languages, their implementation, and their application. He has led a succession of research projects focused around the design and implementation of production-quality functional-language systems for both uniprocessors and parallel machines. He was a key contributor to the design of the now-standard functional language Haskell, and is the lead designer of the widely-used Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). He has written two textbooks about the implementation of functional languages.

More generally, he is interested in language design, rich type systems, software component architectures, compiler technology, code generation, runtime systems, virtual machines, garbage collection, and so on. He is particularly motivated by direct use of principled theory to practical language design and implementation -- that's one reason he loves functional programming so much. He is also keen to apply ideas from advanced programming languages to mainstream settings.

Contributions: Object-Oriented Style Overloading for Haskell

Ira Pohl is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The department is part of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering. His current research is in object-oriented programming and topics in software methodology. He has written widely on programming in C and C++.

His research interests include artificial intelligence, the C, C++ and Java programming languages, practical complexity problems, heuristic search methods, deductive algorithms, and educational and social issues. He originated error analysis in heuristic search methods and deductive algorithms.

Contributions: C# by Dissection

Q

R

Ash Rofail is Chief Technology Officer of User Technology Associates (UTA, Inc.) a consulting firm in Northern Virginia. The author of several books and articles on Microsoft-based Technologies and XML, Rofail is a frequent conference speaker who also teaches at universities throughout the United States.

Contributions: The Microsoft .NET Platform and Technologies

Steven Roman is a professor emeritus of mathematics at California State University, Fullerton. His previous books with O'Reilly include Access Database Design and Programming, Writing Excel Macros, and Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic.

Contributions: Access Database Design & Programming, 3rd Edition

Daniel Rubiolo started in the IT environment around 1991 teaching ‘Object Oriented Analysis and Design’ and ‘Mathematical Models for Decision Making’ in the I.C.E.S. University (Sunchales, Santa Fe, Argentina). As a developer, and later as a Development Consultant, he worked building systems and Web solutions in LAN environments; including hardware and network design and support. After some years in a major company building its IT teams and processes to create and support solutions with Microsoft Technologies, he started at Microsoft Argentina as IT Manager: providing IT services, as speaker in some TechNet events, and creating worldwide best practices shared within Microsoft's IT. The last couple of years he has been working as Software Engineer implementing and supporting IT Infrastructure for Microsoft Subsidiaries through Latin America; while at the same time developing his passion for .NET Technologies. Daniel now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and in his spare time he enjoys learning about the new science of the Meme.

S

Mark Sapossnek has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manhattan College, a master's degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. The first half of his career was spent building software tools for mechanical design: computer graphics, solid modeling, design and analysis tools, and expert systems. Since 1993, he has been building client/server, n-tier and Web-based applications for a number of companies. He is currently a Senior Consultant in the New England practice of Microsoft Consulting Services. In addition, for the past two years Mark has been teaching at the Computer Science Department of the Metropolitan College at Boston University.

Contributions: Web Development With .NET

Herbert Schildt is the world's leading C/C++ author. His programming books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide and have been translated into all major foreign languages. He is the author of the best-sellers Teach Yourself C and Teach Yourself C++. He has also written The Annotated ANSI C Standard, C: The Complete Reference, C++: The Complete Reference, and numerous other books on C and C++.

Contributions: C#: A Beginner's Guide

John Sharp is a Principal Technologist at Content Master Ltd, a technical authoring company in the United Kingdom. There he researches and develops technical content for technical training courses, seminars, and white papers. Throughout his development career, John has been active in training, developing and delivering courses, and he currently trains full time. He conducts courses on subjects ranging from UNIX Systems Programming, to SQL Server Administration, to Enterprise Java Development. He has used his experience to create a broad range of training materials covering many subjects. John is deeply involved with .NET development, writing courses, building tutorials, and delivering conference presentations covering Visual C# .NET development and ASP.NET. He lives in Tetbury, Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom.

Contributions: Microsoft Visual C# Step by Step

Curt Simmons is an author and technical trainer specializing in Microsoft operating systems, BackOffice products and Internet technologies. A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) based in Dallas, TX, his books include Configuring Windows 2000 Server (Prentice Hall PTR).

Contributions: The Microsoft .NET Platform and Technologies

Don Syme is a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. Since 1998 he has been working with the .NET Common Language Runtime team to develop a range of languages to target the platform and to analyze and extend the design of the CLR to ensure it is suitable for use by a range of programming languages. He has designed and implemented support for generics in the CLR and C# in conjunction with Andrew Kennedy, and is the author of the ILX toolkit for analyzing the intermediary language of the CLR and implementing languages with functional constructs on top of the CLR. His other research interests include automatic software and hardware verification using model checking and decision procedures, and other aspects related to the static analysis of programs.

Contributions: Design and Implementation of Generics for the .NET Common Language Runtime, ILX: Extending the .NET Common IL for Functional Language Interoperability, Typing a Multi-Language Intermediate Code (condensed version), Typing a Multi-Language Intermediate Code (extended version)

Clemens Szyperski is a Software Architect in the ComApps group within Microsoft Research, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing Science at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is also a frequent speaker at international conferences and workshops.

Contributions: What's In A Name: .NET as a Component Framework

T

Julian Templeman has been a programmer for nearly 30 years, and has worked on systems ranging from microcontrollers to Cray supercomputers, programming in over 20 languages. His work on this book was done through Content Master Ltd, a technical authoring company in the UK. Julian also runs his own training and consultancy company in London.

Contributions: Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Step by Step

Thuan L. Thai started computer programming 15 years ago but has never been tired with this hobby--one that he truly considers an art. He is currently a senior systems engineer at SAIC where he has led the architecture and development of several successful distributed and COM-based imaging systems. He also teaches Win32, MFC, and COM programming courses for Learning Tree International. Prior to all this, Thuan worked for AMS where he developed multi-tiered, object frameworks using C++ and RPC. He received his bachelor of science in computer science from the University of Virginia.

Contributions: .NET Framework Essentials, 2nd Edition

Andrew Troelsen is the Vice President of Instruction at Intertech Incorporated. He has a degree in Mathematical Linguistics and South Asian Studies from the University of Minnesota. He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife Amanda, and spends his free-time investigating .NET and waiting for the Vikings to win a Super Bowl. He is the author of the five star book Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0 that has become the standard reference for this older approach towards building Windows applications.

Contributions: C# and the .NET Platform

U

V

Vobix Corporation is a managed application technology provider that develops, manages, supports and improves mission-critical business applications to help organizations boost efficiency and focus on core competencies. And we deliver that technology in three ways. For small- and medium-sized businesses, Vobix provides managed software services in a hosted or self-hosted environment. For ASPs and ISPs, Vobix delivers enabling technology to help them better serve their customers. And lastly, Vobix helps large corporations, educational institutions and government agencies realize the full potential of their technology investments by doing the heavy lifting of application and software management.

Contributions: Language Independence and Development using Microsoft .NET, Interprocess Communication Standards and Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure

W

Damien Watkins is a director of Project 42, a company that provides consultancy and training on component-based software development for the Internet. Until the end of 2001, Damien was a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University. His PhD thesis, titled "Adding Contracts to Interface Definition Languages," centered on component architectures, which is his major area of research. He has been involved in .NET language interoperability research for the past three years and has given conference tutorials and presented papers on COM, CORBA and .NET at a number of international conferences. He also delivers university courses on COM, CORBA and .NET at both the postgraduate and undergraduate levels. Currently Damien is co-authoring a book on the .NET Framework with Mark Hammond and Brad Abrams.

Contributions: Programming in the .NET Environment, Distributed Object Technologies, Software Component Technologies, An Overview of Security in the .NET Framework

Scott F. Wilson Scott F. Wilson is currently a consultant working on application integration using Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft .NET and the School Interoperability Framework (SIF). Formerly Director of Training Services for Vobix Corporation, and Chief Technology Officer for KiZAN, Microsoft's first Solution Provider Partner of the Year. Scott is the author or co-author of several books on software development processes and distributed applications design, and has worked on several Microsoft curriculum courses as a courseware designer and subject matter expert.

Contributions: Interprocess Communication Standards and Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure