The Second International Symposium on Nuclear Symmetry Energy, NuSYM11, will be held June 17-20, 2011, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Northampton is a lively college town, a vibrant cultural and educational center located in the heart of Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley. There are about 30,000 students in the Five College Consortium — Smith, Amherst, Hampshire and Mount Holyoke colleges and the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst.

For those attending the June 12–17 Gordon Conference at Colby-Sawyer College, Northampton is located about 100 miles south of New London and we hope that many of you will be able to extend your stay in New England.

We plan to discuss recent progress and new challenges in the topics discussed at RIKEN during the NuSYM10 Symposium and specifically:

• Advances in the area of nuclear equation of state.
• Theoretical and experimental developments pertinent to determining the equation of state of isospin asymmetric nuclear matter.
• Symmetry energy information coming from nuclear reactions, nuclear structure, masses and collective modes.
• Effects of symmetry energy in astrophysics.