We intend to establish the International Conference on Prognostics and Health Management as the premier academic event in the emerging interdisciplinary field of PHM. We expect the conference to draw leading technologists, engineers, researchers, and business executives from all over the world. The inaugural conference will take place in Denver, CO, in October 2008. Future conferences will take place on an annual basis and rotate between continents in order to highlight the global nature of the PHM community.

Concepts such as failure analysis, fault protection, health management, and condition-based maintenance are common themes in the engineering and management of complex engineered systems. However, over the last decade, the reliable systems community has started focusing on the fundamental principles of system failures in an attempt to better understand how systems age and to predict when they might fail. The "PHM" term was coined during the last decade to capture the notion that even though failures may not be avoidable, they are almost always predictable. Forewarned is forearmed!

As a scientific and engineering discipline, PHM is still in its infancy. Even though there are a number of conferences across the globe that focus on various aspects of PHM, the quality of the publications (and the underlying research) is highly varied. As we set out to plan this new international conference, we identified a few key objectives:

• Discuss, identify, and establish the scientific methodologies for PHM research;
• Emphasize technical excellence and archival publications;
• Promote PHM as a legitimate science and engineering discipline beyond traditional aerospace application areas;
• Embrace and engage the international PHM community;
• Increase awareness of PHM in academic environments as a new, growing research area.

As we forge ahead to establish PHM as an integral aspect of systems engineering, we need your help! Please help make PHM08 an overwhelming success by submitting an exceptional paper, participating in a panel discussion, sponsoring an exhibit, or attending in person. Thank you for your interest, and we sincerely hope to see you in Denver in October.

Serdar Uckun and Dennis Hoffman