Narottam P. Bansal, PhD, is Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Glenn Research Center, where he has conducted research on glasses, ceramics, and composites since 1985. In addition to publishing more than 230 papers, Dr. Bansal holds seven patents and is the author or editor of five books and 32 conference proceedings. J. P. Singh is the editor of Innovative Processing and Synthesis of Ceramics, Glasses and Composites VIII: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of The American Ceramic Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 2004, published by Wiley. Hartmut Schneider is the head of the "Structural and Functional Ceramics" group at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Materials Research, Köln (Germany) and is a Professor of Applied Mineralogy at the University of Hannover (Germany). He has been working on different topics of high pressure mineralogy and on refractory and ceramic materials. He is renowned for his research work in crystal chemistry, ceramics and composites of mullite, an alumino silicate of the stoichiometric composition 3Al2O3·2SiO2. Professor Schneider has published over 200 scientific and technical papers. His list of awards includes the Japanese Government Research Award, the Lilienthal Award, and the Fellowship of the American Ceramic Society.