METRICS

It is my pleasure to welcome you to SIGMETRICS 2002, the premier conference on computer system modeling, measurement, and evaluation. SIGMETRICS continues to enjoy strong community support and interest. This year the number of paper submissions was a record for conferences not joint with IFIP WG 7.3 and the quality of the program reflects this.This year we have two workshops in conjunction with the conference; MAMA (MAthematical performance Modeling and Analysis) and PAPA (Practical Aspects of Performance Analysis). MAMA has been a regular now for several years and is organized by Mark Squillante with support from IBM Research. PAPA is new and is co-chaired by Daniel Menasce and Chris Loosley. PAPA is also co-sponsored by CMG (Computer Measurement Group) and we hope it will become a regular event as well as be the beginning of closer ties with CMG.The conference received a total of 170 paper submissions from 22 countries, a new record for years in which Sigmetrics is held independently from Performance. Following Sigmetrics tradition, all papers were double blind reviewed, meaning that the reviewers did not know the identity of the authors. Each submission was carefully evaluated by at least three program committee members. Before the program committee meeting, all papers with inconsonant scores underwent an email discussion process among the reviewers to determine if a consensus about the paper could be reached. In some cases, the discussion process led to additional reviews being solicited from other program committee members or from outside experts for the particular paper's topic.The program committee meeting was held on February 2, 2002 in Princeton, NJ, with nearly 30 PC members in attendance. During the meeting, the authorship of papers continued to be unknown to the committee. Based on extended discussion, the PC chose 23 submissions for publication as full papers and an additional 18 submissions to appear as posters with extended published abstracts. Among those the paper entitled "PC Based Precision Timing Without GPS" was chosen to receive the "Best Student Paper Award". We congratulate the authors for their outstanding work.