This is the seventh Italian Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, and its main topics include analysis of algorithms, automata, computability,  computational complexity, cryptography, data types and structures, design of algorithms, formal languages, foundations of functional programming, foundations of logic programming, new computing paradigms, parallel and distributed computation,  program specification, program verification, term rewriting, theory of concurrency, theory of data bases, theory of logical design and layout, theory of robotics,  theory of knowledge bases, type theory, semantics of programming languages, security,  symbolic and algebraic computation. 

ICTCS '01 will be held in Torino, Italy, October 4 -- 6, 2001 at Villa Gualino. Previous conferences took place in Pisa (1972), Mantova (1974 and 1989), L'Aquila (1992), Ravello (1995), and Prato (1998).

The Program Committee selected 25 papers out of 45 submissions, all of them in electronic format. Their authors are from 11 countries, from all over the world. Each submission has been sent to three Program Committee members, assisted by their own referees.

The selection meeting took place as an electronic forum. To permit a deeper evaluation of the papers, the Program Committee split in two parts for a preliminary discussion, according to the two tracks of the Journal of Theoretical Computer Science which are ``Algorithms, automata, complexity and games'', and ``Logic, semantics and theory of programming'', and which reflect the main division in research topics  within the community. Then, to preserve the unifying aspects of the research in theoretical computer  science, all the papers were evaluated again and all the decisions were taken altogether.

We would like to warmly thank all the people who submitted their papers to the conference, the Program Committee members and their referees for their invaluable contribution.