About the authors DAVID B. DOONER, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. He received his doctorate from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1991 where he remained as a Post-Doctoral Fellow from 1991-1994. He worked at the General Motors Gear Center in 1989 and was a visiting scientist at the Mechanical Sciences Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1992. ALI A. SEIREG, PhD, is Kaiser Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Ebaugh Professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville. He received his degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1954 and has had an extensive career in engineering, education, and industry. He has served as consultant for numerous industrial, governmental and scientific organizations and has been consultant to the FALK Corporation since 1956. He founded and served as chairman of the Computer Engineering Division of ASME and was the editor of the ASME Hybrid Journal on Computers in Mechanical Engineering, CIME. Dr. Seireg has chaired many international conferences and held numerous offices in national and international organizations, including the Presidency of the ASME/AGMA Gear Research Institute from 1983 to 1993, the chairmanship of the ASME Council on Engineering from 1985 to 1989, and the Executive Council of the International Federation of Theory of Machines and Mechanisms from 1983 to 1991. His honors and awards include the 1970 George Westinghouse Award of ASEE, the Richards Memorial Award of ASME in 1973, the E. P. Connell Award of AGMA in 1974, the ASME Machine Design Award in 1978, the Kuwait Prize for Science in1987, and the ASME Design Automation Award in 1990. He was elected an honorary member of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society in 1986, a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Science in 1988, and Honorary Life Member of the ASME/AGMA Gear Research Institute in 1994.