About the Contributors

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Nigel K. Ll. Pope took his undergraduate degree in politics and Anglo-Saxon literature at the University of Queensland. He later took his MBA from the University of Central Queensland and his doctorate from Griffith University, specializing in sport sponsorship. His research has appeared in the Journal of Advertising, European Journal of Marketing and Sport Marketing Quarterly amongst other publications. His current interests are in digitization of entertainment and the structural foundations of the entertainment industry. He is currently an associate professor with Griffith Business School.

Kerri-Ann L. Kuhn is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where she teaches e-Marketing Strategies. She holds a PhD from QUT (Australia) and a Masters of Marketing Management with Honours from Griffith University (Australia), where she also earned her Bachelor degrees in International Business and Commerce, and a Graduate Diploma in Japanese. She is also the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. Her research interests are in the areas of marketing communications and interactive technologies, particularly video gaming, and the effects on consumer behavior. She has published and presented papers in this area, which includes appearances in national print media and radio interviews with the Australian Broadcasting Corpora- tion (ABC).

John J.H. Forster is currently on secondment from Griffith University, Australia (where he teaches economics) to The American University of Sharjah, UAE (teaching management). In one way or an- other, John has been associated with Canberra CAE, Queensland University of Technology and Sydney University (all Australia); University of the South Pacific (Fiji); University of Waikato (NZ); North East London Polytechnic, Keele University and Queen Mary College (all UK); and McMaster University (Canada). His early interest was in urban networks and urban labour markets. John has also been an Australian public servant, as well as a member of the crew of the historic tug, SS Forceful, on the Bris- bane River and Moreton Bay. He has published eight books on topics such as strategic management, sports governance and public management. His interest in digital technologies include both sport and the operation of electronic markets.

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Amin Ahmadi is currently a PhD scholar at Griffith University in conjunction with the Queensland Academy of Sport. He is currently receiving scholarship from the Centre of Excellence in sports science. He completed his MSc program in computer and communication engineering at Griffith, Australia in 2005. He is a member of IEEE, Sports Medicine Australia and the Centre of Wireless Monitoring and

Application at Griffith University. His main research area of interest is in monitoring and enhancing the performance of Tennis Players using inertial sensors. He also won the Minister Excellence Award in “Innovation and Creativity” in 2006.

Kalman Babković was born in Kikinda, Serbia, 1975. He received his BSc and MSc degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Novi Sad in 2000 and 2005 respectively. He is currently a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. He is coauthor of 3 scientific papers in the field of robotics published in international journals.

Peter Barron received a PhD in Computer Science from Trinity College in 2005. He was formerly a member of the Distributed Systems Group in Trinity College where he was a Research Fellow in the areas of middleware and programming models for ubiquitous and mobile computing. He is now working for NewBay Software Ltd.

Scott Bingley completed an honours degree in Information Systems in 2005. After this he became a Software Test Analyst before being awarded an Australian postgraduate scholarship to commence his PhD, using an innovation diffusion approach to examine the adoption of Internet applications in local sporting bodies. As part of his degree, Scott has undertaken study as part of a university exchange program at Slippery Rock University in the USA. Scott’s research interests include the use of information systems in community based organisations, an area where he has been involved with a number of research projects.

Ellen L. Bloxsome spent more than one and a half decades in the hospitality industry. She took an Honours degree in Sociology and Marketing at Murdoch University and is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in the electronic communication of cultural memes. She is now a freelance scholar in South East Queensland, Australia.

Branislav Borovac was born in Leskovac, Serbia, 1951. He re ceived the MSc and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engi neering from the University of Novi Sad in 1982 and 1986 re spectively. He became assistant professor of engineering design 1987, assistant professor of robotics 1988, associate professor of robotics 1993 and since 1998 he has been full professor of robotics, all at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. He is coauthor of two research monographs published by Springer - Verlag, 1990 and CRC Press, 2001. He is author/coau thor of 30 sci entific papers in the field of robotics pub lished in internati onal journals, as well as author/coauthor of about 80 papers in proceedings of interna tional conferences and congresses.

Stephen Burgess completed his PhD in the School of Information Management and Systems at Mo- nash University. His thesis was in the area of small business interactions with customers via the Internet. He has research and teaching interests that include the use of ICTs in small businesses (particularly in the tourism field), the strategic use of ICTs, and B2C electronic commerce. He has received a number of competitive research grants in these areas. More recently his small business research has extended to the use of the Internet in local community based organisations. He has recently edited two books and special editions of journals in topics related to the use of ICTs in small business, and been track chair at the ISOneWorld, IRMA, Conf-IRM and ACIS conferences in these areas.

378 About the Contributors

Brendan Burkett, associate professor, joined the University in 1998 following an international sporting career and as a professional engineer employed in Australia and in Europe. As a past international sports person Brendan was fortunate enough to represent Australia as is the paralympic champion, world champion, world record holder, Commonwealth Games and Australian multiple medallist, and is an inductee in the Swimming Queensland Hall of Fame. In 2000 Brendan was the Institution of Engineers, Australia, professional engineer of the year, and is a fellow of IEAust. The combination of sporting and professional achievements has been recognised as Brendan is the recipient of several awards such as the Australia Day Sporting Award, the Order of Australia Medal (OAM). The impact of Brendan’s research in sports technology is demonstrated with research grants and publications, as an invited professor for the European masters in physical activity, and as part of the Prime Ministers 2020 Summit.

Andrew Busch received BEng and BIT degrees from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in 1998, and completed his PhD in 2004 at the same institution. He is currently a lecturer in the School of Engineering at Griffith University. Dr. Busch is an active researcher in the area of sports and biomedical engineering, with emphasis on the use of inertial sensors for the study of the biomechanics of cricket. Other areas of expertise are signal and image processing, including the use of speech, audio and image analysis for biometric authentication.

Vinny Cahill, professor, holds a personal chair in computer science at Trinity College Dublin where he also serves as Head of the Department of Computer Science and director of research for computer science and statistics. His research addresses many aspects of distributed systems, in particular, middleware and programming models for ubiquitous and mobile computing with application to intelligent transportation systems, global business systems and personal healthcare/independent living. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications in international conferences and journals.

Sindy Chapa, Ph.D, is an assistant professor and associate director of the Center for the Study of Latino Media and Markets at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State Uni- versity. Professor Chapa’s research design involves both quantitative and ethnographic elements. Her research concentrates on political advertising, advergames, and a series of topics in the consumer behavior area, including cross-cultural preferences for counterfeit products and family decision-making. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Customer Behaviour, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Consumption, Markets and Culture: Resonant Representations, International Journal of Business Disciplines and Journal of Interactive Advertising. She has also co-authored book chapters in several textbooks, including the Global Consumer Behavior, edited by Chantal Ammi; and Advertising, Promotion and New Media, edited by Marla Stafford and Ronald Faber.

Beth A. Cianfrone is an assistant professor of sport administration in the Department of Kinesiology and Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has two main areas of research interest: (a) sport sponsorship and advertising effectiveness, and (b) sport consumer behavior. Her research aims to quantify the impacts of various sponsorship mediums and examine theoretical models that explain consumer behavior related to the impact of sport sponsorship. Dr. Cianfrone has been a prolific scholar with manuscripts published in major sport management journals such as the Journal of Sport Manage- ment and International Journal of Sport Communication. She has delivered over 40 presentations at international or national conferences on sport management or sport marketing.

379 About the Contributors

Jean-Pierre Dussault is a professor in the “Département d’Informatique” at the University of Sherbrooke, since 1982. He received his BSc in mathematics in 1977, a MSc in 1979 and his PhD in operations research in 1983, all from the University of Montréal. His main research interests concern the design and convergence analysis of optimization algorithms. He is also interested by various applications of optimization techniques, among which the optimization of a billiard player, image synthesis and reconstruction, network optimization, etc.

Andre Gagalowicz is a research director at INRIA, FRANCE. He was the creator of the first laboratory involved in image analysis/synthesis collaboration techniques. He graduated from Ecole Su- perieure d’Electricite in 1971 (engineer in Electrical Engineering), obtained his PhD in automatic control from the University of Paris XI, Orsay, in 1973, and his state doctorate in mathematics (doctoctorat d’Etat es Sciences) from the University of Paris VI (1983). He is fluent in English, German, Russian and Polish and got a bachelor degree in Chinese from the University of Paris IX, INALOCO in 1983. His research interests are in 3D approaches for computer vision, computer graphics, and their cooperation and also in digital image processing and pattern recognition. He received the prices of the best scientific communication and the best technical slide at the Eurographics’85 conference. He was awarded the second price of the Seymour Cray competition in 1991 and one of his papers was selected by Computers and Graphics journal as one of the three best publications of this journal from the last ten years. He took part to the redaction of eight books and wrote more than one hundred publications.

Marc Godard is a senior undergraduate student studying cognitive science at Queen’s University, Kingston. Marc’s academic interests include computer gaming systems, computer vision, robotics, artificial intelligence and neural networks. Marc can consistently run a pool table.

Benjamin D. Goss received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Louisiana Tech University and his doctorate at The University of Southern Mississippi. He serves as an associate professor in the entertainment management program within the Department of Management and the College of Business Administration at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, USA. Goss has taught in Missouri State’s joint business degree program with Liaoning Normal University in Dalian, China. He served as a visiting instructor at The University of Southern Mississippi and held academic appointments as an assistant professor and sport management program coordinator at Winthrop University and Clemson University. He has authored or co-authored 15 peer-reviewed refereed journal articles, two book chapters, and several trade journal articles. Goss’ vita includes 56 professional conference presentations, including 35 at the international and national levels. In 2007, he co-founded the Journal of Sport Administration & Supervision and now serves as its editor.

Michael Greenspan is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he has been as associate professor since 2001. From 1991 to 2001, he was employed by the Institute for Information Technology of the National Research Council of Canada, as a researcher and ultimately as the group leader of the Computational Video Group. He was awarded a PhD from Carleton University, Ottawa, in 1999. Dr. Greenspan holds membership with the Professional Engineers of Ontario, the IEEE Computer Society, the Canadian Image Process- ing and Pattern Recognition Society (CIPPRS), and he serves on the Expert Advisory Panel of Precarn

380 About the Contributors

Associates. He was the recipient of the CIPPRS 2003 Young Investigators Award, and was awarded the Best Paper Award with his co-author at the 5th Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision in 2008. Dr. Greenspan’s research interests include computer vision, especially object recognition and tracking, entertainment robotics, and biomedical applications of computer vision.

Mads Haahr, PhD, works as lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Statistics. He is a true multidisciplinarian whose research interests include technical subjects, such as mobile and ubiquitous computing, self-organisation in peer-to-peer networks and artificial intelligence for games, as well as softer subjects such as locative media, computer game studies and the art/technology interface. He is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of Crossings: Electronic Journal of Art and Technology, a peer-reviewed academic journal that explores the areas where art, science and technology intersect.

Gaoqi He received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Department of Mathematics in 1997 and 2000 from East China Normal University respectively, and PhD Degree in 2007 from State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University. Now he is working as a lecturer at Department of Computer Science, East China University of Science & Technology. His main research interest focuses on computer graphics, virtual reality and mobile computing.

Monica D. Hernandez is a visiting assistant professor at The University of Texas-Pan American. She holds a PhD in international business from the same university. She has published in Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Young Consumers, Journal of Interactive Advertising, and Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship among others. Her work also has appeared in various book chapters, including Global Consumer Behavior and Advertising, Promotion and New Media, and numerous conference proceedings. Areas of research interest include Internet advertising, international marketing and consumer psychology.

Daniel A. James received a PhD from Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia in 1998 after completing his BSc and MPhil there. He is currently a senior research fellow with the Centre of Wireless Monitoring and Applications at Griffith University and was recently elevated to senior member of the IEEE by the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. His principle areas of research interest are in applying sensors to sporting and biomedical applications. He has around 50 publications in this area including several international patents. His work in sports monitoring technologies includes the sports of swimming, rowing, snowboard, combative sports, running, cricket and martial arts. His current partners include the Australian Institute of Sport, Queensland Academy of Sport, Cricket Australia, International Cricket Council, and Hearts First Cardiology Clinic.

Anthony K. Kerr is a doctoral student at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He received his MBA from the University of Oregon and MS in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts and has worked extensively in professional and collegiate sports worldwide. His research interests focus largely on the antecedents of fandom in foreign markets and the contribution these fans can make to professional sports teams. He has published articles on the brand equity of sports teams and the team identification of foreign team supporters in a variety of journals including theInternational Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship and Football Studies.

381 About the Contributors

Michael Koh is the director of the School of Sports, Health and Leisure at the Republic Polytechnic, Singapore. He remains active in research and is currently involved in nationally funded and institutionally funded research grants. He also publishes regularly in the areas of sports biomechanics, motor learning and development and physical activity. As School Director, he has put together several research teams that have won research grants in nationally funded projects from agencies such as the National Research Fund - Interactive Digital Media and the A*STAR Science and Engineering Research Council Fund of Singapore.

Joseph Lam received a BSc (Eng) in Computer Engineering and a BSc in Life Sciences in 2004, and an MSc (Eng) in 2006 from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He was awarded both the Best Paper and Best Student Paper at the 5th Canadian Conference on Computer and Robotic Vision (CRV’ 08). In 2007, Joseph worked as a research engineer with the robotics and vision group at MDA Space Missions in Brampton, Ontario. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University. His research interests include robot calibration, eye-in- hand systems, object recognition in range data, and urban scene analysis.

Jean-François Landry received his bachelor’s degree in computer science at Université de Moncton (Moncton, Canada), to then pursue his studies at Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Canada) to acquire his Master’s degree in the same field in 2008. The main focus of his research was about using optimization and artificial intelligence methods to solve problematics related to the creation of an automatic pool player. During his studies, he worked as an intern for 6 months at SAP Research Labs France (Nice, France) in 2007 in the field of artificial intelligence in the context of public security. Since April 2008 he’s been holding a position as Development Engineer at Amadeus France in Sophia Antipolis and will start his PhD studies at Université de Sherbrooke in January 2009.

Will Leckie is an electro-optics hardware designer at Nortel in Ottawa, Canada. He received the MSc in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University at Kingston and the BSc in Applied Physics from the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research interests include optical communications, control systems and intelligent systems.

Mark Lee completed a master’s of business (marketing) at RMIT University, during which time he developed a research interest in video game advertising. He is now a marketing consultant specialising in emerging marketing opportunities and entrepreneurial ventures.

Jianfeng Liu received his bachelor’s degree from East China Jiaotong University in 2007. Now he is a master’s student in the State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University. His main research interests are Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Human-Computer Interaction.

Kieran Moran, PhD, is currently a senior lecturer and director of the Sports Biomechanics Research Group in the School of Health and Human Performance, Dublin City University, Ireland. He has overseen the development of a number of technologies for assessing and enhancing neuromuscular capacity and sports performance.

382 About the Contributors

Eckehard Fozzy Moritz has studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich, and received his doctorate degree at the Technical University of Tokyo. He is currently director of the SportKreativWerkstatt, a company masterminding, moderating, and facilitating innovation projects for companies like BMW and BASF. He holds a honorary professorship from Qufu University, China, and is adjunct professor at the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Mexico. Professor Moritz has been chairman of the 6th World Conference of the International Sports Engineering Association, and has been teaching and consulting at universities world-wide.

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller is a researcher in novel interfaces that gap the bridge between human bodies and technology. His latest research interest is the concept of Exertion Interfaces: interfaces that deliberately require intense physical effort to facilitate social connectedness, to enable what he calls Sports over a Distance. Floyd has three degrees from three continents, including a Masters degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, USA. He received two scholarships to study in the USA and Australia, and was also offered a Fulbright scholarship and a Media Lab Europe Fellowship. He also has extensive work experience from the USA, Australia, Ireland and Germany, where he worked for industry and academic research organizations such as Springer Verlag, Xerox PARC, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, MIT, Media Lab Europe, CSIRO and the University of Melbourne.

Rajendra Mulye, PhD, is a senior lecturer and program leader in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University. His area of research includes the country-of-origin effect, choice modelling and more recently education. He has recently taken up a secondment as protagonist, Petty Officer John–117 or Master Chief, in the Halo of the universe.

Yuji Ohgi received a PhD from Keio University after completing a masters and undergraduate degree at the university of Tsukuba in sports and health sciences. Currently an associate professor he is the editor in chief of the Japanese Society of Science in Swimming and Water Exercise. A former member of the JOC and coaching staff for the Atlanta, games he pioneered the use of inertial sensors in swimming and other sporting applications. He currently heads a spin out company in Japan as well as leading a collaborative effort between Japanese hi-tech firms to create a single chip monitoring solution. He holds a number of national (Japan) and international patents in sports technology and has published extensively in the Japanese and international literature.

Alex Ong is the assistant director of the School of Sports, Health and Leisure at the Republic Poly- technic, Singapore. Alex has a BSc Joint Honours in Sports Science / Physical Education / Mathematics as well as MSc in biomechanics (medicine) and a MA (Education). He also holds a PhD in education. He has been in the education industry for the past 15 years and is involved in e-learning, classroom and outdoor teaching in schools, as well as education policy formulation. Whilst teaching, he was actively involved in coaching, relying primarily on biomechanical principles to enhance the technique of his developmental athletes. His passion in applying theory to practice has benefited many student athletes. In the area of education, he is currently involved in sports science experiential interdisciplinary education using interactive digital media.

Weimin Pan got his bachelor’s degree from Department of Computer Science, Central South University in 2006. He received his master’s degree from State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University in 2008. His main research interests are virtual reality, information security and data encryption.

383 About the Contributors

Zhigeng Pan received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the Computer Science Depart- ment in 1987 and 1990 from Nanjing University respectively, and PhD Degree in 1993 from Zhejiang University. Since 1993, he has been working at the State Key Lab of CAD&CG on a number of academic and industrial projects related with distributed graphics, virtual reality and multimedia. He has published more than 70 papers in international journals, national journals and international conferences. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Virtual Reality.

Veljko Potkonjak was born in Belgrade in 1951. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade in 1974, 1977, and 1981 respectively. He became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in 1985, associate professor in 1990, and the full professor in 1995. During his educational career, Professor Potkonjak has been teaching mechanics, robotics and biomechanics. He was also a teacher or a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Electronics, University of Nish, Technical Faculty in Cacak, National Technical University of Athens, and American University of Athens. Research interests of Prof. Veljko Potkonjak primarily concern robotics, focusing on the dynamic modeling of robotic system and the implementation of these models to design and control. He is the author/coauthor of three international research monographs (in English, some of them translated into Japanese and Chinese), two book chapters, several textbooks, 60 international journal papers, and a number conference papers. Within the field of robotics and automa- tion he was engaged in a large number of projects (research and commercial).

Chee Kwang Quah is a project manager at the School of Sports, Health and Leisure at the Republic Polytechnic, Singapore. He obtained his BEng(Hons) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University of Leeds in England. He then obtained his MSc in Multimedia Technology and Systems from University of Surrey (England), and PhD in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. His research interests are in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics and image analysis. His current focus is on capturing 3D human motion by using video cameras.

Sean Reilly is a PhD candidate in the Distributed Systems Group at the School of Computer Science and Statistics in Trinity College Dublin. His research interests include computer-augmented sports, embedded systems, middleware and event-based programming models for ubiquitous computing.

David D. Rowlands received his BSc (physics) in 1986 and PhD in 2000 from Griffith University. He is a member of Centre of Wireless Monitoring and Application at Griffith University. He is also a member of IEEE. His main area of research is in the area of sports monitoring and technology. His other current research is in the area of biological monitoring. This covers the visualization of biological data, the analysis of biological signals, and medical information systems. He has also been researching in the areas of mobile computer security. His PhD research was in the area of deep sub-micron semiconductor device simulation and fabrication.

Donald P. Roy (PhD, University of Memphis) is an associate professor of marketing in the Jennings A. Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA. His research and teaching focus on marketing communications and sports marketing. He has published articles in the Journal of Advertising, Psychology & Marketing, International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, Marketing Management Journal, Services Marketing Quarterly, Journal of Marketing

384 About the Contributors

for Higher Education, and Sport Marketing Quarterly. He has also authored several cases that have been published in marketing textbooks and is a member of the Marketing Management Association.

Hock Soon Seah is a professor and director of the gameLAB at the School of Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Concurrently, he is also a Co-Director of the NTU Institute for Media Innovation and a Visiting Research Fellow of the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the founding president of the Singapore Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH since 1998. He serves on the editorial board of Computers & Graphics Journal, International Journal of Virtual Reality, and International Journal of Computer Games Technology. He has more than 20 years experience in computer graphics and animation research. His current research areas are in geometric modeling, image sequence analysis with applications to digital film effects, automatic in-between frame generation from hand-drawn sketches, augmented reality, and advanced medical visualization.

Lauren Silberman is a graduate student in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program and a researcher at the Education Arcade. She graduated with a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also spent four years as a research assistant in the Games, Learning, and Society program. Using commercial sport video games as a model, her core research investigates how sport video games mediate athletes’ physical play. She has observed and interviewed numerous professional and college level athletes about their virtual game-play. Her research has been published in The Journal of Physical Education and she has presented her research in various forums throughout the United States and abroad. She has worked for NBC and other leading media companies as a researcher and project assistant.

Constantino Stavros, PhD, is a senior lecturer and program leader with the School of Economics, Finance & Marketing at RMIT University. He has research interests in strategic marketing communications and, much to the disappointment of his wife, is an avid video gamer.

Gunnar Stevens is a senior researcher on the Fraunhofer FIT in Germany. He has received his diploma degree in computer science at the University of Bonn. For several years he has worked in private industry as well as in academia. Currently, he leads a public funded project where he develops software systems in cooperation with several software companies. The software systems are easy to adapt and are based on the metaphor of software components. His research interests include the interdisciplinary areas of human computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work. Primarily he studies phenomena of appropriating technology and related to this, he is interested on ethnographical methods based on a design perspective. Additionally, he is co-author of papers about the methodological concept of the Business Ethnography as a methodology for reflexive technology development.

Miomir Vukobratović was born in Botos, Serbia, 26. 12. 1931. He re ceived the BSc (1957) and PhD degrees (1964) in mechanical engi neering, University of Belgrade, and his second DSc degree from the Institute Mashinovedeniya, Rus sian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1972. He is di rector of Robotics Center, at Mihailo Pupin In stitute, Belgrade. He is a holder of “Joseph Engelberger” award in robotics (Robotic Industries Association in USA, 1996.), and holder of highest national scientific awards and recognitions. Professor Vukobratović is a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, foreign member of Russian Academy of Sciences, president of Serbian Academy of Engineering Sciences, a foreign member of Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian and several other national engineering academies.

385 About the Contributors

He is doctor honoris causa of Moscow State University (Lomonosov) and several other universities in Europe. His major interest is in the development of efficient computer aided modeling of robotic system dynamics as well as dynamic modeling, stability and control in legged locomotion, especially humanoid robotics. Main pioneering results are: zero-moment point (ZMP) concept and semi-inverse method; centralized feed-forward control and robot dynamic control; Force feedback in dynamic control and application of practical stability tests in robotics; Unified approach to control laws synthesis for robot interacting with dynamic environment; pioneering achievement in active exoskeletons and humanoid robotics. He is cited more than 2000 times according to SCOPYS citation index.

Volker Wulf is a professor in Information Systems and the director of the Media Research Institute at the University of Siegen. At Fraunhofer FIT, he heads the research group user-centred software- engineering (USE). He has published more than 190 papers. He has edited 10 books, among which, Expertise Sharing: Beyond Knowledge Management and Social Capital and Information Technology both with MIT Press Cambridge MA, and End User Development with Springer Dordrecht, are probably best known. His research interests lie primarily in the area of computer supported cooperative work, computer supported cooperative learning, human computer interaction, participatory design, ubiquitous computing, and entertainment computing. Recently he is interested in new ways to interface physical activities with virtual representations.

James J. Zhang is a professor of sport management in the Department of Tourism, Recreation, and Sport Management at the University of Florida (UF). His primary research interests are applied measurement and/or applied studies examining sport consumer and organizational behaviors. Adopting an integrated approach, the following perspectives have been investigated for the purpose of predicting sport consumption behaviors and formulating effective marketing strategies: (a) market demand and competition, (b) socio-motivation, (c) program and service quality, (d) lifestyle, and (e) sociodemographic backgrounds. He has also studied sport leadership with a focus on formal and informal leadership associated with athletic program management. Classical and contemporary leadership theories, such as trait, behavioral, contingency, and transformation, are often used as research frameworks. Dr. Zhang has published extensively in all related sport management journals that currently exist in North America and made presentations at all major conferences in the field.

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