The ISUILS8 was held at Elounda Bay Palace, in Crete, Greece, during October 3rd-7th, 2009. After the opening session in which we paid tribute to Prof. Andre Bandrauk, Honorary Chair, we had eight scientific sessions covering the most recent topics in ultrafast intense laser science and enjoyed the presentations given by the discussion leaders and the invited speakers as well as the stimulating discussions after those presentations.

In Sponsors' Session on Oct. 5th, we had presentations by the six sponsor companies, Thales Laser, Femtolasers, Fastlite, SILIOS Technologies, Amplitude Technologies and Coherent, on their recent R&D and new products, followed by the short address from Japan Laser.

On the afternoon of Oct. 5th, we had an excursion to visit the famous ancient archaeological site at Knossos, and then, Archanes Village for dinner to enjoy local Greek cuisine. On the evening of October 6th, we enjoyed visiting laboratories at FORTH, where we were impressed by the advanced scientific research at the frontiers.

On behalf of the international organizing committee, we thank all the invited participants, all the attendees, and all the sponsor organizations and companies for having made the symposium so enjoyable and successful.

Sincerely yours,

Co-chairs, ISUILS8
Dimitris Charalambidis (FORTH, Crete, Greece)
Didier Normand (CEA, Saclay, France)
Kaoru Yamanouchi (The University of Tokyo, Japan)