VLDB Endowment Board of Trustees The VLDB Endowment is a non-profit foundation whose objective is to promote scientific and educational activities in the area of large-scale data, in- formation, and knowledge management. The Endowment serves as the steering committee for the VLDB conference series. The Endowment also sponsors var- ious scholarly activities. It has established a program that supports summer schools, tutorials, and other training activities of this kind, in countries that could otherwise not afford the expenses for such events. The Endowment is also the main sponsor of the biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR), and it runs the VLDB Journal, one of the most successful journals in the database area. On various activities, the Endowment closely cooperates with ACM SIGMOD. The VLDB Endowment has a board of 21 elected trustees, who are the legal guardians of the Endowments charter and activities. Trustees are elected for a six-year period; the election procedure is document in the code of regulations available on the Endowments Web site. The board is continuously renewed, with one third of its members being replaced every two years. The trustees are elected among internationally distinguished researchers and professionals in the field of database and information systems who have contributed to the objectives of the Endowment with dedication and distinction. All trustees provide voluntary service. President Gerhard Weikum Vice-President Laura M. Haas Secretary Paolo Atzeni Treasurer Michael J. Franklin Members Amr El Abbadi Gustavo Alonso Peter M.G. Apers Elisa Bertino Peter Buneman Johann Christoph Freytag H.V. Jagadish Christian S. Jensen Donald Kossmann David Lomet Rene J. Miller Shojiro Nishio Beng Chin Ooi Meral Ozsoyoglu Krithi Ramamritham Raghu Ramakrishnan Stanley B. Zdonik Further information on the VLDB Endowment, its charter and activities, is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.vldb.org xvii