The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), on its report of this year to the President of the United States entitled "Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future," defines software as the new physical infrastructure of the information age and presents a recommendation to make fundamental software research and absolute priority, both, for computer systems engineering as well as for applications. It emphasizes the areas of software development methods and component technologies, and human-computer interfaces and interaction. This recommendation comes as a result of the following findings: The demand for software far exceeds the ability of the United States to produce it and very often the product is somewhat fragile. In general, the technologies used to build reliable and secure software are inadequate and the diversity and sophistication of software systems are growing rapidly. Finally, more and more often, common activities of ordinary people are based on software. This year we have chosen, for obvious reasons, the theme of the Computing Research Conference to be Software Research and we thank our keynote speaker, Dr. Javier Arroyo, for sharing with us an aspect of this increasingly important field.

We would like to thank all the participating students and professors for their contribution, through their work and participation, to the success of the CRC '99 Conference, ever improving the quality of the presentations and the diversity of the research efforts. We also would like to thank the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and specially Ms. Omayra López, Ms. Waleska Campos, and the rest of the staff of the Center for Computing Research and Development (CECORD) for their energy, effort, dedication, and overall contribution in making this event a reality throughout the years. Last but not least, we would like to express our gratitude to the National Science Foundation for their economic support.

Dr. Domingo Rodríguez
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIR

Dr. Néstor Rodríguez
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIR