Dr. Maxim Finkelstein received his M.Sc degree in Mathematical Physics from Leningrad State University (1971), Ph.D in OR from Leningrad Elektropribor Institute, 1979 and Doctor of Science degree (habilitation) in OR from St.-Petersburg Elektropribor Institute (1993).      Currently he is a Senior Professor at the Department of Mathematical Statistics, University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.      His main research interests are: reliability theory and applications, survival analysis, risk and safety modelling, applied stochastic processes. He had published more than 160 papers and 5 books on different aspects of reliability and stochastic modelling. His last book "Failure rate modelling for reliability and risk" was published by Springer in 2008. He is the Editor of “South African Statistical Journal”  and serves as a board member and Associate Editor for a number of international journals.   Dr. Ji Hwan Cha received his B.Sc degree in Computer Science and Statistics from Seoul National University, Korea, in 1993 and his M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Statistics from Seoul National University in 1995 and 1999, respectively.      He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Statistics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. He is an associate editor of Journal of the Korean Statistical Society. He has published numerous papers in various international journals and two books on Introductory Statistics and Reliability Theory, respectively (in Korean). His research interests include applied probability, reliability theory, stochastic processes, stochastic operations research and management science.