Aloha!

It’s a great pleasure to welcome you a second time in Hawaii for a joint ISROMAC / ISIMet conference.

After the great success of ISROMAC 16, my primary goal for the present event is to highlight the interest within the scientific community of rotating machinery. For that purpose, the 35 forums initiated in 2016 have been renewed for this 17th edition. ISROMAC should become a first favorite for researchers working all around the world on these various topics, as they should be assured to find valuable up-to-date scientific discussions at ISROMAC. The conference has thus been open to both full paper submissions and presentation only contributions. The intent is to promote the presentation of recent findings and ensure quality of the content. Talks on-very recent discoveries are thus very welcome, and complement the highly rated papers reporting complete work, which will be published in quality journals after the conference. The review process conducted in the last months has improved the quality of all submitted full papers, so that a large number has now a chance to be included in these special issues.

ISIMet 1 has been very inspiring with a number of great invited lectures. That effort has enabled us to extend the scope of the conference beyond fluid mechanics and to attract more participants this year. As a result, we have exciting invited and keynote speakers, from both solid and fluid mechanics, who will provide their insight on the state of the art work in the area of image based methods. Although the technical sessions are still mainly fluid oriented, and the number of participants from solid mechanics is modest, the grouping of specialists from solid and fluid communities is not common elsewhere, which makes this event very unique and special. I hope that it will facilitate outstanding scientific discussions and new ideas on both sides, including the experimentalists working in the area of rotating machinery!

I would like to thank the forum organizers for their efforts over the last months, especially to conduct the review process for all submitted full papers. Most of them have accepted a second commitment, while some new colleagues have also accepted to help, even if they were not able to attend the conference. The success of the event is reliant on your efforts! Thanks also to the AMValor team in France who managed the registrations, Jama Green from the AOE department at Virginia Tech, and Julia Chang from the Hyatt for their help and support. I would like also to express my gratitude to all the reviewers, who have dedicated time to improve the quality of the papers. We currently have about 800 researchers registered on the website, which gives an idea of the scientific community involved in the process and interested in ISROMAC and ISIMet.

The resulting quality of the papers is generally higher than in the last event, so more papers have been selected for publication in the journals. The process has already been initiated, as the general idea is to enable fast publication after the conference. All other papers will be published in an online, open-access archive, with permanent access for the scientific community. Lastly, more than 380 abstracts have been submitted, and there will be about 250 talks presented in the technical and plenary sessions. I am confident that following ISROMAC & ISIMet events will continue to grow in attendance and establish the standard for quality.

This year once again, award for the best presentation will be offered to the most outstanding speaker in the technical sessions. The award ceremony will take place in the closing session on Thursday 21, based on the feedback of the chairmen of all sessions. In the meantime, do not skip the welcome reception on Saturday 16 evening, and the gala dinner on Wednesday 20 evening!

This conference will be an event to enjoy both inside and outside the venue, the Hyatt Regency; I trust you will all make time for both attending the excellent sessions and exploring beautiful Maui. To help you with that difficult task, the technical sessions will start early in the morning, lunch will be provided in the conference area, so the sessions will end at 4pm in the afternoon. I wish you a very enjoyable stay in Maui!

Kind regards,

Olivier Coutier-Delgosha, Conference chair