It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Nanjing for the 16th International Conference on Phonon Scattering in Condensed Matter (Phonons 2018). This is the latest in the series of conferences which take place nominally every three years. The two previous conferences were held in Ann Arbor, US in 2012 and Nottingham, UK in 2015.  In the more than 45 years since the first conference in  St. Maxime, there have been some significant changes in phonon physics research, e.g. areas like phonons in helium and heat pulse techniques have largely given way to topics such as phonons in nanostructures and coherent phonon techniques. However, as we are sure you will see from the program, phonon physics is still a vibrant field of research which generates many interesting papers in the literature and at conferences and workshops.

We have put together this program consisting of five plenary lectures on key areas of current phonon physics research, fifteen invited lectures on significant recent developments and, from your contributions, a program of more than 100 talks and 50 posters.

We will be welcoming to Nanjing more than 200 delegates from all over the world. We have also put together a social program to show you some of the best of the China culture, and to facilitate discussions and the formation of international research links and collaborations.

We would like to thank our sponsors: Nanjing Normal University, Tongji University, Nanjing University, Education department of Jiangsu Province, Science and technology department of Jiangsu Province, and Company A and B. The latter two are scientific equipment suppliers and will have exhibition tables and representatives present on Tuesday 10th and Thursday 12th respectively, so please find the time to look in on them.

Finally, we wish you an enjoyable stay in Nanjing and a scientifically stimulating conference.