Editorial

Abstract

A collaboration of five international conferences and two symposia devoted to mechanical engineering design research form the 2004 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference that will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah, September 28 through October 2. At the age of 54 the Biennial Mechanism and Robotics Conference, meeting every two years since its inception at Purdue University in 1950, is solidly middle aged. The youngest is the Design for Manufacturing Conference which met for the first time at the 1996 DETC that I had the pleasure of hosting in Irvine, California. The conferences on design automation, computers and information in engineering, and design theory and methodology round out the list with ages of 27, 23 and 15 years, respectively.