First of all, I would like to express our gratitude to Peter Gregory, David Flanagan and Tim Adams, as well as their colleagues, for the publication of this Special Issue on the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOPCAS), and for their appreciation of our work. The Institute of Physics was founded in 1928. Through the steadfast efforts of generations of scientists, IOPCAS has become one of China's leading research institutions in physics and related areas. Its current programs are mainly focused on condensed matter physics, optical physics, atomic and molecular physics, plasma physics, soft matter physics, and condensed matter theory and computational physics. As of December 2008, IOPCAS had a staff of 415 including 107 research professors, and 643 graduate students. In 2003 our institute acquired another entity, the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics (BNLCP), sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, making it one of the first six national laboratories in China. In the past decades, IOPCAS has been active at the cutting edge of materials science, and has made some notable contributions to this burgeoning field, such as the “Discovery of oxide super- conductors at liquid nitrogen temperatures”, “Nd-Fe-B permanent magnetic alloys using low purity materials”, “Successful growth of nonlinear optical crystals such as Ce:BaTiO3 and Nd:YVO4”, and “New iron- and nickel-based oxypnictides superconductors”. Currently, materials research in IOPCAS covers a wide range of topics from inorganic materials to biomaterials, involving the areas of magnetic materials, new superconducting materials, novel compound semiconductors, new functional crystals, photo-functional materials, oxides, glassy materials, nanomaterials, and so on. Much attention is being paid to fundamental research, because our aim is to develop the most advanced technological applications and to further the betterment of humankind. This Special Issue, which includes 5 reviews and 9 research news articles, and a forthcoming Special Issue in physica status solidi on condensed matter physics are a summary introduction to our recent research in materials science and condensed matter physics, and provides a unique opportunity for us to exchange ideas with the international scientific community.