The purpose of the meeting series is to bring together an international group of leading researchers in radiative transfer, line shapes, dense plasma spectroscopy, non-LTE population kinetics, opacity studies and plasma processes, to identify current problems in these fields and define directions for future research. The framework will be a series of oral sessions and one poster session in which a large fraction of the participants will make presentations. Additional unstructured time will be included for discussions and the development and planning of future efforts. This time, a dedicated session for oral presentations by PhD students is also planned. The interested students are welcome to submit their presentations to the Organizing Committee. The selected best talks will be presented by the winners during the dedicated session.

In particular, with the operation start of the hard X-ray free-electron-laser facility, European XFEL, located in Schenefeld/Hamburg and with the further developments of the soft X-ray FEL facility, FLASH, located in DESY, Hamburg, we intend to emphasize and give prospects for future applications of this unique radiation sources for plasma research. The meeting will, therefore, frequently refer to those facilities. In particular, the conference room is located on the top of the FLASH facility at DESY. Tours for the RPHDM 2018 participants to the facilities are also planned.