This volume resulted from a year-long program at the Morningside Center of Mathematics at the Academia Sinica in Beijing. It presents an overview of nonlinear conversation laws and introduces developments in this expanding field. Xin's introductory overview of the subject is followed by lecture notes of leading experts who have made fundamental contributions to this field of research.A. Bressan's theory of $L^1$-well-posedness for entropy weak solutions to systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conversation laws in the class of viscosity solutions is one of the most important results in the past two decades; G. Chen discusses weak convergence methods and various applications to many problems; P. Degond details mathematical modelling of semi-conductor devices; B. Perthame describes the theory of asymptotic equivalence between conservation laws and singular kinetic equations; Z. Xin outlines the recent development of the vanishing viscosity problem and nonlinear stability of elementary wave - a major focus of research in the last decade; and the volume concludes with Y. Zheng's lecture on incompressible fluid dynamics.This collection of lectures represents previously unpublished expository and research results of experts in nonlinear conservation laws and is an excellent reference for researchers and advanced graduate students in the areas of nonlinear partial differential equations and nonlinear analysis.
