This special issue of the Journal of Vision contains papers based on presentations given at a free three-day meeting hosted by the University of California Irvine (UCI) in October, 2001. The meeting was organized by UCI and the Vision and Color Division of the Optical Society of America (OSA).

The talks and posters presented at the meeting provided a timely and far-ranging perspective of the state of vision and color vision research as we begin the new millennium. The one-and-a-half days of talks on vision included sessions on: Noise limitations in early vision; Optimal observers in perception and cognition; Perceptual learning; Optical factors in visual resolution; Visual attention; and Mid-level vision. The topics covered during the two-day color workshop ranged from the photopigment opsin genes that determine human spectral sensitivity to the mechanisms that give rise to color constancy. The color workshop was organized into four sessions on: Early postreceptoral pathways; Development and ageing of color vision; Cortical color physiology; and Color perception. This meeting also saw the inauguration of a new biennial invited talk named in honor of Robert M. Boynton. The first speaker was Rhea Eskew. Abstracts of all presentations are available online (Optical Society of America, 2002a,b).

We thank the organizers of the meeting, the organizers of the individual sessions, and the participants, all of whom gave presentations of a uniformly high standard. The local organizers, Michael D'Zmura, George Sperling and UCI, were superb hosts. We also thank the Institute of Mathematical Behavioral Sciences and the School of Social Sciences for their support.