Faculty of Engineering, University of Alberta; Faculty of Science, University of Alberta. As on previous occasions, advice and general guidance were provided by the International Steering Committee. The next IMSE conference will be held in August 2002 at the University be found on the of Saint-Etienne, France. Details concerning this event can VVEB pagehttp://wwwean. univ-st-etienne. fr/imse2002/index. htm. This volume contains five invited papers and thirty-five contributed pa­ pers accepted after peer review. The papers are arranged in alphabetical order by (first) author's surname. The editors would like to record their thanks to the referees for their willingness to review the papers, and to the staff at Birkhauser Boston, who have handled the publication process with impressive efficiency. But, above all, they are indebted to Edward McDonald, Alan Morrison, and Alan Bryden for their help in the preparation of the typescript. Glasgow, United Kingdom Christian Constanda, IMSE Chairman The International Steering Committee of IMSE: C. Constanda (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow), Chairman M. Ahues (University of Saint-Etienne) B. Bertram (Michigan Technological University) H. H. Chiu (National Chen Kung University, Tainan) C. Corduneanu (University of Texas at Arlington) R. P. Gilbert (University of Delaware) A. Haji-Sheikh (University of Texas at Arlington) V. P. Korobeinikov (Institute for Computer Aided Design, Moscow) A. Largillier (University of Saint-Etienne) A. Mioduchowski (University of Alberta, Edmonton) D. Mitrea (University of Missouri-Columbia) A. Nastase (Rhein. -VVestf. Technische Hochschule, Aachen) K. Oshima (Japan Society of Computational Fluid Dynamics, Tokyo) F. R.