This issue, guest edited by Professor Gautam R. Desiraju, Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science is brought out in the context of holding the first ever meeting of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr 2017) in India. It is very appropriate that the recent past president of IUCr is the guest editor and the invited reviews spread around the wider and newer areas of crystallography authored by young crystallographers around the world.

The themes for each review has been meticulously planned to bring out the importance of crystallography in providing specific answers to queries in areas of physics, chemistry and biology and materials science. On behalf of the editorial board, I sincerely thank all the authors for their contributions and the guest editor for his dedicated efforts. It is an honour to bring out this issue in time with the meeting of the IUCr being held at Hyderabad during 21–28 August 2017. The journal is co-published with Springer and I acknowledge the quick nod given by them to provide free access to all the participants at the IUCr 2017. My special thanks to the editorial team at IISc and at Springer who as always put in an enormous effort to get the articles ready for publication in time.

T. N. Guru Row

Editor-in-Chief

ssctng@sscu.iisc.ernet.in