Abstract :
It is with great sorrow that we inform the sad news of the sudden and untimely passing of Professor Yahiko Kambayashi, the COE Program Leader. Dr. Yahiko Kambayashi, Professor and Dean of Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, was an IEEE Fellow, a vice-chair of ACM Tokyo/Japan Chapter, a trustee of the VLDB Endowment, the president of Information and Systems Society, IEICE and a winner of the 1995 ACM SIGMOD Contribution Award. Professor Kambayashi is one of the pioneers of database research as well as the leaders of the international database research community. As the leader of this COE program, he energetically directed the research projects of this program, encouraged young researchers, promoted industrial-academia cooperation, and initiated collaboration with local communities, especially through the ALAN-K project. His sudden leave is not only a tragic loss to his family but also a tremendous loss to those who owed to his great leadership. Professor Kambayashi has been giving his great efforts to organize this conference, just before his sudden passing. Together with all the authors, we like to use this place to express our heartfelt condolence and our deepest sympathy to his family.
