On behalf of the entire Organization Committee, I'm elated to be able to welcome you to the Eighteenth IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2020). This year, PerCom returns to its birthplace: the state of Texas in the United States and visits the capital, Austin, for the first time.

Following the long established PerCom tradition, the conference program stretches across five days, with three plenary days bookended by two days of workshops and other events. The organization of such an event is possible only with the tireless effort of a dedicated team of individuals, and I would personally like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to these colleagues who have worked hard to put together the excellent PerCom program. The Technical Program Chair (Daniela Nicklas) and her crack team of Vice-Chairs (Octav Chipara, Salil Kanhere, and Delphine Reinhardt) shepherded a stellar main program, ultimately bringing twenty-three solidly peer-reviewed technical track papers to the main program. These efforts involved program committee members and external reviewers too numerous to thank individually, but without their careful reviews and thoughtful discussions, such a strong program would not be possible. The main program also includes three keynote talks from A.J. Brush, Diane Cook, and Kamau Bobb.

The plenary days' technical presentations are complemented by several other programmatic components. The Work in Progress (WiP) Chairs (Xi Zheng and Petteri Nurmi) have crafted a program with a total of fourteen thought provoking papers; for this first time this year, PerCom will feature a WiP best contribution session with the opportunity for three of these contributions to be presented to the plenary audience. All contributions will be showcased in a poster session that will also include eight engaging and interactive demonstrations; the demonstration program was put together under the watchful eyes of Antinisca Di Marco and Brent Lagesse. This year's PhD Forum has eleven participants; these emerging young researchers will spend half a day engaging with PerCom veterans, learning the ins and outs of research and research presentations, before having the opportunity to publicly present their research in the poster session as part of the main conference. For the second year in a row, PerCom 2020 will feature a special industry session, chaired in 2020 by the unfailing Nabil Ashurafa and Abhishek Mukherji. This year's industry includes seven contributions on topics that span the range of topics relevant to PerCom.

As has historically been the case, PerCom 2020 features a vibrant slate of thematic workshops. These events, to be held on the Monday before and Friday after the primary technical program, were overseen by the Workshop Co-Chairs (Amy Murphy and Edison Thomaz). Each event entails its own program of papers, invited talks, and panels with its own organizing and program committees.

As a first for PerCom this year, we invited all authors of contributions (from the technical sessions, demonstration, industry track, workshops, and PhD forum) to submit artifact descriptions to be reviewed. The Artifact Chairs (Christian Becker, Md Osman Gani, and Vaskar Raychoudhury) oversaw a dedicated artifact verification process with a team of reviewers willing to try out code, review datasets, and provide iterative feedback; five contributions throughout the PerCom 2020 program will be "badged" with certified artifacts and results.

As another first for the event this year, PerCom 2020 has two Diversity and Inclusion Co-Chairs. As the first of their kind of PerCom, these chairs crafted and disseminated a new diversity statement for the conference, and a series of changes large and small to the conference organization and community.

PerCom 2020's publication chairs, the unflappable Sarah Clinch and Matthäus Wander ensured the timely receipt and formatting of all of the numerous contributions for the conference. And all of those emails and tweets and other posts you have seen for the year leading up to the conference? The credit for these is owed entirely to the best publicity team on earth: Jonathan Liono, Bobak Mortazavi, and Ella Peltonen. The reimagined PerCom 2020 website was led by none other than the highly skilled Jie Hua and SangSu Seth Lee. Our local arrangements team-of-one Javier Motto-Mena is the true genius behind the on-the-ground efforts in Austin, and the conference would not be anywhere near what it is without his heroic efforts.

In addition to these numerous individuals and all others involved in the conference, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the essential support of the IEEE Computer Society, as a technical sponsor of the conference. A significant amount of support for students to attend the conference was provided by the National Science Foundation, the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP), and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC). And the University of Texas graciously allowed the use of the magnificent Engineering Education and Research Center on the UT Austin campus as the perfect venue for the event.

I am beyond ecstatic to welcome everyone to PerCom 2020 in Austin, Texas and truly hope that everyone enjoys a warm Texas welcome and a productive conference visit.

Christine Julien, PerCom 2020 General Chair