Welcome to the 2nd International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval, CIVR2003. The goal of CIVR is to illuminate the state of the art in visual information retrieval and to stimulate collaboration between researchers and practitioners. This year we received 110 submissions from 26 countries. Based upon the reviews of at least 3 members of the program committee, 43 papers were accepted for the research track of the conference. First, we would like to thank all of the members of the Program Committee and the additional referees listed below. Their reviews of the submissions played a pivotal role in the quality of the conference. Moreover, we are grateful to Nicu Sebe and Xiang Zhou for helping to organize the review process; Shih-Fu Chang and Alberto del Bimbo for setting up the practitioner track; and Erwin Bakker for editing the proceedings and designing the conference poster. Special thanks go to our keynote and plenary speakers, Nevenka Dimitrova fromPhilipsResearch, RameshJainfromGeorgiaTech, ChrisPorterfromGetty Images, andAlanSmeatonfromDublinCityUniversity.Furthermore, wewishto acknowledge our sponsors, the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, TsingHuaUniversity, theInstitutionofElectricalEngineers (IEE), PhilipsResearch, andtheLeidenInstituteofAdvancedComputerScience at Leiden University. Finally, we would like to express our thanks to severalpeople who performed important work related to the organization of the conference: Jennifer Quirk and Catherine Zech for the localorganizationat the BeckmanInstitute; Richard Harvey for his help with promotional activity and sponsorship for CIVR2003; andtotheorganizingcommitteeofthe?rstCIVRforsettinguptheinternational mission and structure of the co