Over the past fifteen years the International Topical Conference on Optics of Liquid Crystals (OLC) has provided a stimulating and interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of the best new work in the field of liquid crystals and related materials. TheVIIIth International Topical Meeting on Optics of Liquid Crystalswas held at the hotel Wyndham Palmas del Mar Resort and Villas in Humacao, Puerto Rico 27 September–1 October 1999. Eighty-five scientists from 17 different countries around the globe (Asia, Europe, North and South America) came to Puerto Rico to present their scientific work and to discuss all the modern aspects of Optics of Liquid Crystals. As a result 21 invited talks, 32 contributed oral presentations and 51 posters were presented. New results at the forefront of research in the optics of liquid crystals were presnted by leading experts in the field. Invited talks given by N. Clark (USA), F. Derrien (France), B. Jerome (Netherlands), R. Kamien (USA), I.-C. Khoo (USA), L. Komitov, (Sweden), T. Lubensky (USA), S. Marino (Japan), I. Musevich (Slovenia), Y. Shen (USA), K. Singer (USA), G. Sinha (USA), H. Skupin (Germany), R. Stannarius (Germany), R. L. Sutherland (USA), B. Taheri (USA), Y. Tabe (Japan), C. Umeton (Italy), D. Weitz (USA), S. Zilker (Germany), and S. Zumer (Slovenia) covered different important topics such as chiral interactions, surface vibrational spectroscopy, time resolved FTIR, holograms in PDLS, lasing in liquid crystals, quadrupolar molecular nonlinear optics, organic photorefractive systems, optical solitons, different aspects of behaviour, properties and applications of chiral smectic liquid crystals, photo-initiated reorientational dynamics, electro-optic effects in LC films, wave generation in two-dimensional LCs and others.