Welcome from the program co-chairs

In putting the program together, we asked twelve outstanding researchers in diverse fields to organize invited sessions for the workshop. These organizers solicited contributions from renowned colleagues in their respective fields, and upon acceptance they achieved an impressive turnout of up to nine papers per session. We are indebted to these colleagues for their time, efforts, and expertise. We also received 59 submissions of regular papers, out of which 28 were accepted and are included in five additional regular sessions. We are very thankful to all of the 19 members of our Technical Program Committee for their responsiveness and proficiency in reviewing the regular papers. Almost all the submissions had three peer-reviews; this was instrumental in selecting the best papers for inclusion in the program. The papers in the invited sessions were mostly peerreviewed by participants of the same sessions, where each paper received at least two anonymous reviews. We are therefore grateful to the participants of the invited sessions too, not only for their valuable contributions to the sessions, but also for their assistance in reviewing other papers. Their reviews undoubtedly helped improve the quality of the invited papers.