In memoriam Paris C. Kanellakis

O ur colleague and dear friend, Paris C. Kanellakis, died tragically on December 20, 1995, together with his wife, Maria-Teresa Otoya, and their beloved young children, Alexandra and Stephanos. En route to Cali, Colom-bia, for an annual holiday reunion with his wife's family, their airplane strayed off course during the night, minutes before an expected landing, and crashed in the Andes. As individuals, we grieve over our tragic loss—of a friend who was regarded with great affection, and of a happy, thriving family whose warmth and hospitality were gifts appreciated by friends around the world. Their deaths create for us a void that cannot be filled. As researchers, we mourn the passing of a creative and thoughtful colleague who was respected for his many contributions, both technical and professional, to the computer science research community. Paris left unfinished several projects, including a paper on database theory intended for this special issue of Computing Surveys, to be written during his holiday visit to Colombia. Instead of that paper, we offer here a brief biography of Paris and a description of the research topics that interested him over the last few years, together with the contributions that he made to these areas. It is not our intention to give definitive surveys or histories of these areas, but rather to honor the significant recent research of our friend.Permission to make digital / hard copy of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication, and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and / or a fee.