The Organizing Committee Welcomes you with great pleasure and pride to the 25th International Symposium on Shock Waves (ISSW25) in Bangalore, the Garden City of India. The Symposium is being hosted by the Society for Shock Wave Research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. As a prelude to ISSW25, we conducted an International Workshop on Contemporary Research in Hypersonic and Shock Waves during 27 - 28 January 2005 in which about 150 researchers including 11 Russian scientists participated

ISSW25 is unique in many ways. This is the Silver Jubilee symposium and also it is help just one year after ISSW24 in China. In spite of the short gap the response to the symposium from the shock wave community has been very good. About 209 abstracts have been received from the authors of 25 countries. We are happy to note that the highest number of abstracts in from India. In addition to 8 Plenary Lectures, we have accepted 136 abstracts for Oral Presentation and 65 abstracts for Poster Presentation. We have brought out the proceedings in CD-ROM form and we are exploring the possibilities of producing a hard copy of the proceedings.

The organizing committee has made maximum efforts to provide accommodation at subsidized rates for all the delegates in order to overcome the unusual high hotel rates in Bangalore. Efforts are also made to make your stay comfortable with many cultural evenings, dinners and visits. We have put together an interesting accompanying person's programme, as well.

Programme of this magnitude is possible only with active support from the sponsoring agencies. The organizing committee is overwhelmed by the spontaneous support from many agencies in kind and cash. Some of these agencies include DRDI, ISRO, CSIR, ARDB, DST, JNCASR, IISc, STC, CSIC, JATP, M.S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, CIE, Hindhivac Pvt Ltd. Jalahalli Education Society and Mason and Summers. We would like to express our deep gratitude to all these agencies. The responsibility of organizing the ISSW25 was shared by the Local Organizing Committee, students and staff of the Department of Aerospace Engineering. The Organizing Committee would like to express sincere thanks to all these members. We received very good support from the International Advisory Committee for which we place on record our sincere gratitude. Prof. Frank Lu, Chairman of ISSW23 and Prof. Zonglin Jiang, Chairman of ISSW24 shared their experiences and data base with us which simplified our task. We would like to thank them for this support. The support of International Shock Wave Research Community and the newly established International Shock Wave Institute at Tohoku University and its management committee is highly appreciated.

We hope that you will enjoy the symposium and your stay in Bangalore.

K.P.J.Reddy
Chairman, ISSW25
July 18, 2005.