The main contributions to this volume present overviews of the different subfields or applications of high pressure studies. In contrast, contributed papers offer more specialized aspects of various high pressure studies. The various contributions to this volume make clear the wide range of fundamental and applied problems that can be studied by high pressure techniques, and also point towards a major growth of high pressure science and technology in the near future. The text focuses mainly on advances achieved in the years since the previous ASI devoted to the high pressure field.