This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop on Recent Trends in Operator Theory and Applications (RTOTA 2018), held from May 3-5, 2018, at the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee. The articles introduce topics from operator theory to graduate students and early career researchers. Each such article provides insightful references, selection of results with articulation to modern research and recent advances in the area. Topics addressed in this volume include: generalized numerical ranges and their application to study perturbation of operators, and connections to quantum error correction; a survey of results on Toeplitz operators, and applications of Toeplitz operators to the study of reproducing kernel functions; results on the 2-local reflexivity problem of a set of operators; topics from the theory of preservers; and recent trends on the study of quotients of tensor product spaces and tensor operators. It also includes research articles that present overviews of state-of-the-art techniques from operator theory as well as applications to recent research trends and open questions. A goal of all articles is to introduce topics within operator theory to the general public.