This special issue of Chromatographia contains the papers presented at the 17th International Symposium on Separation Sciences, News and Beauty in Separation Sciences (17th ISSS) held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on September 5–9, 2011. This international symposium was a scientific meeting organized annually after 2002 by the member countries of the Central European Group for Separation Sciences (CEGSS). This year, the 18th ISSS is being held in conjunction with the 29th ISC in Torun, Poland, and next year, the 19th ISSS will take place in Croatia. The origin of the ISSS series (not to be confused with the EuSSS) dates back to a GC meetings held in Zagreb in 1967. From 1990, these meetings were organized biennially in Bled (Slovenia) and in Opatija (Croatia) until 1998. During the 4th ISSS in October 1996, it was decided to extend scientific cooperation by inviting societies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Slovakia to participate. Currently, ten countries including Austria, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine are members of the CEGSS. The 17th ISSS was the first symposium of this series of meetings to be held in Romania. The symposium was organized by the Cluj Branch of the Romanian Chemical Society (SChR), under the auspices of the SChR, the CEGSS, the EuSSS, the Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca (BBU) and the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS) (Fig. 1). As a preliminary to this symposium in 4–5 September 2011, the Second Meeting of the ‘‘Transylvania Summer School in Chromatography’’ (tssc’2011) entitled ‘‘Past, Present and Future in Chromatography’’ was organized where Professors Boguslaw Buszewski, Attila Felinger, Pavel Jandera, Jozef Lehotay and Hartmut Frank gave tutorials about fundamentals, practices and ethics in separation sciences. The Summer School was very useful for young scientists to enrich their knowledge about the current progress in chromatography and related separation techniques. It also gave them the opportunity to establish new contacts with their colleagues from other locations. The tssc’2011 participants were allowed to attend the 17th ISSS scientific programme and exhibitions. The 17th ISSS was focused on the fundamental and practical aspects of separation and detection methods, sample preparation and hyphenated techniques applied to analytical, preparative and industrial purposes. The symposium allowed scientists from academia and industry from around the world to present their latest results and to establish new collaborations. I wish to offer special thanks to all the people who submitted abstracts covering many areas of separation sciences in chemistry, biology, pharmacy, medicine, environment, ecology, food and life science. The opening ceremony started with a welcoming address by the symposium chair followed by Professor Florin Stamatian, the prefect of Cluj County, Professor Buszewski, the president of the EuSSS and Professor Victor Corneliu Radu, the vice president of the SChR (Fig. 2). The opening ceremony continued with a talk by Professor Alexandru Simon from the Centre for Transylvania Studies on ‘‘Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania’s Treasure City’’. The opening concluded with a performance of folk dances by a company from the Children’s Palace. V. Coman (&) Babes-Bolyai University, Raluca Ripan Institute for Research in Chemistry, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294 Cluj-Napoca, Romania e-mail: coman_virginia@yahoo.com