It was our pleasure again to host the 28th ASME annual conference on information and storage and processing systems (ASME ISPS 2019) at The University of California, San Diego, California, USA from June 24–25, 2019, which was organized and sponsored by the ASME ISPS Division. ASME ISPS 2019 is a unique conference which offers an ideal forum for researchers in both academic and industrial environments to foster synergies in multidisciplinary areas of the data storage and processing industry, and others. Papers presented in this conference address technologies and knowledge advancement related to:

  • Tribology, Dynamics and Servo control of Nano-Micro systems

  • Actuator/suspension and sensor

  • Packaging Technologies for Solid-State Flash Storage and Memory

  • Fundamentals on Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording

  • Data Storage Solution and System for Data Center Operation and Optimization

  • Emerging and future data Storage Technologies

  • Dynamics and Control for Future Technologies

  • Smart Sensors and Actuators

  • Micro/Nano & Biomedical Mechatronic Systems

  • Optical Imaging Devices and Opto-mechatronic Systems

  • Flexible Media Handling Machines and Printed electronics, Exposing and Printing Technologies

  • Advanced Simulation in Science and Engineering

  • Application of Data and Artificial Intelligence in Mechanical Engineering

We have 58 accepted papers in the above areas that were presented in the conference. The conference features two keynote speeches and one distinguished talk. The first keynote speech was given by Prof. Jen-Yuan (James) Chang, Distinguished Professor, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. The ISPS banquet speech was provided by the distinguished speaker Professor Frank Talke, University of California, San Diego, USA. Lastly, on the second day, the joint keynote speech was from Dr. Antanas Daugela Naonmetronix, LLC, Fayetteville, AR.

ASME ISPE 2019 inherits long-time tradition to attract annually high quality contributions from countries around the world. Significant amount of papers presented in the conference are research and development results of industry–university research collaborations. In addition to a best conference paper award, starting from 2008 and sponsored by ASME ISPS Division, in ASME ISPS 2019, best track paper awards for outstanding papers in each technical track were presented to outstanding papers. To encourage student participation in the conference as well as to promote student research in information storage and processing systems, ASME ISPS 2019 provides three ISPS Division graduate student fellowships and six ISPS Division graduate student conference scholarships to waive graduate student’s conference registration fees.

To archive the papers presented in the ASME ISPS 2019, authors of recommended papers from the accepted papers of ASME ISPS 2019 were invited and encouraged to submit full papers to this special issue. All submitted papers went through a rigorous peer-review process. Many reviewers are in fact world leading experts in relevant fields. Many papers went through substantially revisions before getting acceptance from reviewers for final publication, resulting in 23 high-quality submissions accepted. We sincerely thank reviewers who review the manuscripts in a thorough and constructive manner. Without the fast responses from all reviewers, this special issue will not be in production on time.

We would like to acknowledge the help from the ASME staff for the ASME ISPS 2019 conference. Furthermore, we would like to thank all session organizers, session (co-) chairs and the ISPS executive members. Last, but not least, a final word of gratitude goes to all presenters and participants of the conference. The ASME ISPS 2019 would not be successful without your dedicated participation.