As the new Chairman of the NEWRAD Committee, I am delighted to introduce this special issue of Metrologia that records the proceedings of NEWRAD 2002, which was held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland on 20-24 May 2002. As in previous conferences, there was a range of contributions with a strong emphasis on applications, and the Conference provided the usual valuable opportunity to listen to the needs of user communities. As a result of resource constraints, National Metrology Institutes and other standards bodies are, these days, targeting their activities more and more onto topics of the highest priority. Events such as NEWRAD therefore provide a unique opportunity to gather the latest ideas, to assess the state of the art and to help assign priorities. As in the past, it also was an occasion at which collaborations between various communities were strengthened and during which much exchange of information and ideas could take place. The convivial atmosphere created by Al Parr and his NIST colleagues did much to stimulate this interchange and we are grateful to them for their efficient local organization.

The change of Committee Chairman also provides me with an opportunity to offer a few remarks on the departure of Terry Quinn from the BIPM. One of the founders of NEWRAD, Terry has, of course, made major personal contributions to the field and has championed this conference since its first meeting in 1985. We owe him a great debt of gratitude and wish him a long and happy retirement. For my part, following Terry as Director of the BIPM and as Chairman of your committee is a huge challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed my period as President of the Consultative Committee for Photometry and Radiometry and look forward to continuing my association with the community at future NEWRAD meetings.

We plan to return to Davos for the next NEWRAD in late September/early October 2005 and are grateful to Werner Schmutz of the World Radiation Centre for his help in the arrangements. He may be contacted by telephone on +41 (081) 417 5100 and by e-mail at w.schmutz@pmodwrc.ch. I hope to see you there!

Previous NEWRAD meetings and, before that, the meetings on 'New developments and Applications in Optical Radiometry' were at:

• 1985: Cambridge, Massachusetts;
• 1988: National Physical Laboratory, Teddington;
• 1990: World Radiation Centre, Davos;
• 1994: Physicalisch Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin; and
• 1997: Optical Sciences Centre, University of Arizona.