Editor’s note

This Special Issue, entitled Algebraic Combinatorics and Applications, of the Journal of Algebra, Combinatorics, Discrete Structures, and Applications, contains selected papers submitted by conference participants at the "Algebraic Combinatorics and Applications: The First Annual Kliakhandler Conference", Houghton, Michigan, USA, August 26 - 30, 2015, as well as two additional papers submitted in response to our call for papers. The conference took place on the campus of Michigan Technological University, and was attended by 43 researchers and graduate and postdoctoral students from USA, Canada, Croatia, Japan, South Africa, and Turkey. Funding for the conference was provided by a generous gift of Igor Kliakhandler, and a grant from the National Science Foundation. The conference brought together researchers and students interested in combinatorics and its applications, to learn about the latest developments, and explore different visions for future work and collaborations. Over thirty talks were presented on various topics from combinatorial designs, graphs, finite geometry, and their applications to error-correcting codes, network coding, information security, quantum computing, DNA codes, mobile communications, and tournament scheduling. The current Special Issue contains papers on covering arrays and their applications, group divisible designs, automorphism groups of combinatorial designs, covering number of permutation groups, tournaments, large sets of geometric designs, partitions, quasi-symmetric functions, resolvable Steiner systems, and weak isometries of Hamming spaces.