Douglas C. Schmidt is a Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Software Engineering in the Institute for Software Research at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Dr. Schmidt has published 11 books and more than 500 technical papers covering a range of software-related topics, including patterns, optimization techniques, and empirical analyses of object-oriented frameworks and domain-specific modeling environments that facilitate the development of middleware and mission-critical applications running over networks and embedded system interconnects. He can be reached at d.schmidt@vanderbilt.edu.