The dynamics of transition from laminar to turbulent flow remains to this day a major challenge in theoretical and applied mechanics. A series of IUTAM symposia held over the last twenty five years at well-known Centres of research in the subject - Novosibirsk, Stuttgart, Toulouse, Sendai and Sedona (Arizona) - has proved to be a great catalyst which has given a boost to research and our understanding of the field. At this point of time, the field is changing significantly with several emerging directions. The sixth IUTAM meeting in the series, which was held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India, focused on the progress after the fifth meeting held at Sedona in 1999. The s- posium, which adhered to the IUTAM format of a single session, included seven invited lectures, fifty oral presentations and eight posters. During the course of the symposium, the following became evident. The area of laminar-turbulent transition has progressed considerably since 1999. Better theoretical tools, for handling nonlinearities as well as transient behaviour are now available. This is accompanied by an en- mous increase in the level of sophistication of both experiments and direct numerical simulations. The result has been that our understanding of the early stages of the transition process is now on much firmer footing and we are now able to study many aspects of the later stages of the transition process.

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INVITED lectures: Laminar separation bubbles, by M. Gaster; Transient growth with application to bypass transition, by Dan Henningson;The role of external disturbances in laminar-turbulent transition, by Xuesong Wu; Modeling the effects of two-dimensional steps on boundary-layer transition, by Jeffrey D Crouch, V.S. Kosorygin, L.L. Ng; Recent observations in the transition to turbulence in a pipe, by Tom Mullin, J. Peixinho; Localised instability in unsteady separation bubbles, by Jaywant H. Arakeri, S.P. Das, Usha Srinivasan; Interaction of separation and transition in boundary layers: Direct Numerical Simulations, by Herman F. Fasel, Dieter Postl; INSTABILITY I: On fundamental instability mechanisms of nominally two-dimensional separation bubbles, by M. Simens, L. Gonzalez, V. Theofilis, R. Gomez-Blanco; A new stability approach for the flow induced by wall injection, by G. Casalis, F. Chedevergne, Th. Feraille, G. Avalon; INSTABILITY II: The pecularities of development of forerunners on longitudinal structures fronts in the boundary layer of a straight wing, by V.N. Gorev, M.M. Katasonov, V.V. Kozlov; Observation of nonlinear travelling waves in turbulent pipe flow, by B. Hof, Casimir W.H.van Doorne, J. Westerweel, Frans T.M. Nieuwstadt; INSTABILITY III: A strange instability with growth normal to a boundary layer, by J. J. Healey; Numerical studies of streak instability in boundary layers, by Luca Brandt, Carlo Cossu, Dan S. Henningson, J.M. Chomaz, P. Huerre; A possible linear instability mechanism in small-scale pipe flows, by Kirti Chandra Sahu; Effects of strong adverse pressure gradients and incident wakes on transition and calming, by J.P. Gostelow, R.L. Thomas; INSTABILITY IV: Effect of free-stream turbulence on a compressible laminar boundary layer, by Pierre Ricco, Xuesong Wu; Effect of viscosity stratification on secondary and nonmodal instabilities, by A. Sameen; Spectral element stability analysis of vortical flows, by Michael S. Broadhurst, V. Theofilis, S.J. Sherwin; INSTABILITY V: Experimental study of resonant interactions of instability waves in an airfoil boundary layer, by D. Sartorius, W. Wurz, T. Ries, M. Kloker, S. Wagner, V.I. Borodulin, Y.S. Kachanov; Klebanoff modes in swept boundary layers, by Karen Kudar, P.W. Carpenter, Christopher Davies; Effects of compressibility and nose radius on instabilities near the attachment line of swept wings, by J. Sesterhenn, R. Friedrich; INSTABILITY VI: Two-dimensional local instability: complete Eigen value spectrum, by Jean-Christophe Robinet, Chloe Pfauwadel; Instability of flow past a cascade of circular cylinders, by Jitesh S.B. Gajjar; A wave driver theory for vortical waves propagating across junctions between rigid and compliant walls, by P.K. Sen, P.W. Carpenter, S. Hegde, C. Davies; FLOW CONTROL I: Optimal suction design for hybrid laminar flow control, by Jan O. Pralits, Ardeshir Hanifi; Transition control in a flat-plate boundary layer, by Seichiiro Izawa, Takeshi Sakai, Ayumu Inasawa, Ao-kui Xiong, Yu Fukunishi; Linear feedback control of transition in shear flows, by Jerome Hoepffner, M. Chevalier, T. Bewley, Dan S. Henningson; Effects of ambient viscosity on the entrainment and dynamics of a buoyant jet, by Manikandan Mathur, K.R. Sreenivas; FLOW CONTROL II: Disturbance development in boundary layers over compliant surfaces, by Christopher Davies, P.W. Carpenter, Reza Ali, D.A. Lockerby; Suppression of wall turbulence based on stability and turbulence analysis using compliant surfaces, by P.K. Sen, P.S. Josan, S.V. Veeravalli; Roughness induced transient growth: nonlinear effects, by Meelan Choudhari, Paul Fischer; Feedback control in spatially growing boundary layers, by Mattias Chevalier, J. Hoepffner, E. Akervik, D.S. Henningson; FLOW CONTROL III: Effect of elastic supports on the critical value of Reynolds number past a cylinder, by Sanjay Mittal, Saurav Singh; Improvement of lift-to-drag ratio of the aero-train, by Yasuaki P. Kohama, Dong-h