Over seventy scientists from 14 countries participated in the meeting and presented papers either in oral sessions or in two poster sessions that were organized during the conference. Two discussion panels were held, with active participation from the audience. Many of the papers presented at the conference are included in these proceedings.
The main purpose of the conference was to serve as a forum for discussion of new developments, recent applications and new systems in which hopping, disorder, localization and interactions are important. The program included many diverse subjects. The organizing committee made its best to ensure that the program reflected the current research efforts in the field of hopping and related phenomena. The main issues that were discussed were ac conductivity, optical effects, glasses and Coulomb glasses, metal-insulator transition, superconductivity and the superconductor-insulator transition, quantum Hall effect, low-dimensional and granular systems, interactions and correlations, hopping, percolation, weak localization, and biological and organic systems. The discussion panels dealt with questions related to the Coulomb glass and the two-dimensional metal-insulator transition, two topics that are among the hotly debated issues in the field. In addition, the 'old' (and still controversial) question of the importance of correlated many-electron hopping was raised and debated upon. Examples for the ideas invoked in the conference related these issues can be found among the papers of the proceedings.
During the conference the 75th birthday of Michael Pollak, one of the earliest and distinguished members of the hopping community was celebrated. Pollak was presented with a special issue of Philosophical Magazine in his honor, in which many of the conference participants contributed papers.
I would like to thank all the participants of the conference for the interesting presentations, debates and simultaneous discussions that created a stimulating but pleasant atmosphere. Also I thank the other members of the local organizing committee, Issai Shlimak and Michael Klinger from Bar Ilan University, and the members of the international advisory committee. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Israel Science Foundation and from Bar Ilan University.