Introductory remarks from the Editors

Abstract

The local organizers of the 4th BIFD (Bifurcations and Instabilitiesin Fluid Dynamics) Symposium held in Barcelona on 18–21 July 2011 would liketo thank the editors of Fluid Dynamics Research for offering us theopportunity of publishing a peer-reviewed special issue of the journalwith a selection of the contributions presented at this conference. Wethank both the authors and the referees for working with us on the rathertight schedule necessary to release the issue within one year of the dateof the conference. We also thank the invited speakers, B Eckhardt, L Tuckerman, and J M Vega, for contributing keynote papers to this specialissue.The series of BIFD symposia started as a small workshop in Madeira,Portugal, in 2004 with no more than 20 participants. This numberincreased rapidly during the second and third symposia held in2006 (Denmark) and 2009 (United Kingdom), with 40 and 110participants, respectively. The 4th BIFD symposium has consolidated this event as one of the leading conferences in hydrodynamic stability, with nearly 200 participants from around the world.The main goal of this conference is to bring together scientists andengineers from different disciplines directly or indirectly related tofluid dynamics, bifurcation theory and hydrodynamic stability theory. Theconference covered many research areas within the aforementionedfields, ranging from thermal, shear and centrifugal flows to biofluids,films, drops, viscoelastic flows and magnetohydrodynamics. The structureof the conference, with invited plenary talks and focused sessions, helpedthe participants find their home in the conference and share state-of-the-art knowledge within the field of hydrodynamic instabilities.The financial support from MICINN (Spanish Ministry of Science andInnovation, Grant no FIS2009-08065-E) and UPC (Universitat Politècnica deCatalunya) is greatly appreciated. The local organizers wouldalso like to thank ETSAB (Barcelona School of Architecture) forproviding their facilities and support staff, as well as CIMNE (Centerfor Numerical Methods in Engineering) for helping us with theadministrative tasks and management of this event.