This volume is a collection of articles based on the plenary talks presented at the 2008 meeting in Hong Kong of the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics. The talks were given by some of the foremost world authorities in computational mathematics. The topics covered reflect the breadth of research within the area as well as the richness and fertility of interactions between seemingly unrelated branches of pure and applied mathematics. As a result this volume will be of interest to researchers in the field of computational mathematics and also to non-experts who wish to gain some insight into the state of the art in this active and significant field.