At ALCOM's international symposium on 12 – 13 October, 1995, over 100 participants gathered in beautiful Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, to discuss current developments in dynamics and defects in liquid crystals and to honour Professor Alfred Saupe on the occasion of his 70th birthday. ALCOM, the US National Science Foundation and Technology Center on Advanced liquid Crystalline Optical Materials, is a consortium of Kent State, Case Western Reserve and Akron Universities.