This volume is dedicated to the memory of Rudolf Ahlswede, who passed away in December 2010. The Festschrift contains 36 thoroughly refereed research papers from a memorial symposium, which took place in July 2011.

Thefour macro-topics of this workshop: theory of games and strategic planning; combinatorial group testing and database mining; computational biology and string matching; information coding and spreading and patrolling on networks; provide a comprehensive picture of the vision Rudolf Ahlswede put forward of a broad and systematic theory of search.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed research papers contributed to a research project on the General Theory of Information Transfer and Combinatorics' that was hosted from 2001-2004 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF) of Bielefeld University and also papers of several incorporated meetings thereof.

The 63 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on probabilistic models, cryptology, pseudo random sequences, quantum models, statistics, probability theory, information measures, error concepts, performance criteria, search, sorting, ordering, planning, language evolution, pattern discovery, reconstructions, network coding, combinatorial models, and a problem section.