The 8th Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO®/Pacific Rim 2009) was held during the period of Aug.30-Sep. 3, 2009 at Shanghai International Convention Center in Shanghai, China. It was organized by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prof. Bingkun Zhou (President of Chinese Optical Society, China, member of Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Prof. Zhizhan Xu (member of Chinese Academy of Sciences) served as the Conference Co- Chairs.

　　The conference has 5 high level plenary presentations, 174 invited presentations, 2 tutorial presentations, 242 oral presentations and 332 poster presentations in 14 topical areas, which has brought the total number of presentations to 755. In total, there are 838 participants from 28 countries/regions.

　　During the opening ceremony, the co-chair, academician Zhizhan Xu gave the Opening Remarks and the overall introduction of the conference. Academician Bingkun Zhou from Tsinghua Univ., China, Prof. Kenchi Ueda from University of Electro-Communications, Japan and Prof. Changhe Nam from Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea expressed their congratulations to the conference, respectively.

　　Prof. Gérard MOUROU from Institut de la Lumière Extrême, France, Prof. Paul Corkum from University of Ottawa and the National Research Council, Canada, Prof. Stefan W. Hell from Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany, Prof. Jianwei Pan from University of Science & Technology of China, and Prof. Susumu Noda from Kyoto University, Japan gave the wonderful plenary talks, which got high praise from the participants.

　　The topics of the conference include high power laser technology and high energy density physics, semiconductor opto-Electronic devices, ultrafast optics and photonics, solid-State laser and other lasers, nonlinear optics and quantum optics, laser and electro-optical materials, infrared and THz technology and applications, micro-nanophotonics and MOEMS, near-field, integrated and guided-wave optics and thin Film optics, information optics, optical storage and display, optical communications and networking, laser metrology and remote sensing, laser processing and industrial applications , laser chemistry, biophotonics and applications.

　　During the conference period, the organizers arranged the conference activities including the Opening Ceremony, Welcome Reception and Banquet, which got high praise from the participants who thought the activities were very well organized.

　　Most (about 92%) participants have shown their presentation on site, which made the CLEO®/Pacific Rim 2009 become a forum to review the most important and latest developments of lasers and electro-optics, to exchange the update research achievements and future trends in laser and electro-optics, to promote laser and electro-optics applications and to provide the potential collaboration opportunities all regions of the world. Totally speaking, it is a successfully- organized conference.