The Rio Grande Symposium on Advanced Materials is a general technical meeting of materials scientists in the Rio Grande geographic region. It is an outgrowth of the Joint Technical Meetings of the New Mexico Section of the American Ceramic Society and the New Mexico Section of the Materials Research Society initiated in 1989. These meetings, sub-titled "Ceramics and Advanced Materials: Symposia and Poster Session," proved to be quite popular among materials researchers in Rio Grande geographic region as a local warm-up for presentations to be made at national meetings and as a venue for presentations by students from regional universities, with attendance ranging between 75 and 150 people and programs consisting of 30 to 50 presentations. In 1997, the Albuquerque Chapter of ASM International joined with the NM Section of the American Ceramics Society to host the meeting which began its new name, "The Rio Grande Regional Symposium on Advanced Materials". This meeting hopes to reach-out to a broad base of support among local materials societies, and that the meeting will be a focal point for the exchange of technical information in the Rio Grande geographic region well into the 21st century.