Our panel of editors reviewed 125 research summaries from scientists from around the world. They selected for publication 30 stories that they felt most clearly communicated breakthroughs of interest to the optics community. Some of the summaries have related multimedia that you can access using the links below. Thanks to all who submitted summaries as well as to our panel of guest editors: Robert D. Guenther, the panel chair, and guest editors Svetlana Boriskina, Mihaela Dinu, Dmitry Dylov, Alexandre Fong, Andrew Forbes, G. Groot Gregory, Arlene Smith and Stephen R. Wilk.