This special issue of Optical and Quantum Electronics contains a selection of papers that were presented at the 13th International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices (NUSOD) in Vancouver, Canada, August 19–22 2013. NUSOD’13 was chaired by Lukas Chrostowski from the University of British Columbia, Canada and Joachim Piprek, NUSOD Institute, USA.

The purpose of the NUSOD Conference is to provide a forum for scientists from research labs around the world to discuss the recent advances in the modelling of optoelectronic devices. This year the main topics included numerical modelling of light emitting diodes, photo-detectors, photonic crystal fibres, propagation of ultra-short optical pulses, photovoltaic and optical integrated devices. The papers collected in this special issue of Optical and Quantum Electronics provide a comprehensive representation of the topics discussed at the conference.

The editors wish to thank all contributing authors for careful preparation of the manuscripts and the reviewers for their work and timely response. We now look forward to NUSOD’14 that will take place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, September 1–4, 2014.