His research interests are in the areas of production systems, distributed manufacturing, and machining dynamics and control. Dr. Minis received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (1982), his M.S. in mechanical engineering from Clarkson University (1983) and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland. Dr. Minis is a recipient of the 1993 Earl E. Walker Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He also received the best paper award in the area of Engineering Database Management: ``Use of PDES in Group Technology Applications for Electronics,'' at the 1992 ASME International Conference on Computers in Engineering.