Comments by the Chairman

The European Conference on Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS 2012) was held on September 24-28, 2012, in Biarritz, France. The latest advances in the field of radiation effects on electronic and photonic materials, devices, circuits, sensors, and systems, were presented and discussed. The conference featured a Technical Program, an Industrial Exhibit, and one day meeting on radiation ground effects held on September 24 (RADGROUND). The conference gathered 390 attendees, scientists and engineers from 26 countries, with a high participation of France (101), USA (80), Russia (50), Spain (28), Germany (28), and U.K. (25). Raoul Velazco, from TIMA Labs, was in charge of the Technical Program, assisted by a Technical Program Committee listed below and a pool ofmore than 150 reviewers which contributed maintain the high level of quality reached since many years by the RADECS conferences. The total number of contributions reached 201 and each paper received at least four reviews. There were 145 papers accepted and presented in the Oral Sessions (48), Poster Sessions (69), and Data Workshop (28). The scope of the conference encompassed technological processes and design techniques for producing radiation tolerant systems for space, aeronautical or terrestrial applications, as well as relevant methodologies for their characterization and qualification. The Conference Record, gathering all the papers compliant with IEEE quality standards and editorial rules, is available through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The paper candidates and selected for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE will be published in this special issue.