Wide-bandgap materials are critical for improved energy efficiency, primarily due to the advantages they confer to power electronics and solid-state lighting. This symposium will address a broad range of wide-bandgap materials topics critical to the success of both of these applications. The last decade has witnessed explosive growth in solid-state lighting, with many commercial products now available. However, further innovations in materials and materials architectures are needed to achieve efficient emission across the entire visible spectrum at the high current densities required by commercial applications. A similar revolution is now being launched in power electronics, where wide-bandgap materials promise significant improvements in power converter efficiency, reliability, and cost. However, materials issues currently limit these improvements in both the III-N and SiC systems. Materials considerations also dictate the device structures that are feasible; notably, vertical device architectures are undeveloped in the III-N system due to the high cost and limited size of native substrates, but the availability of heterostructures in this materials system affords design flexibility not available in SiC. This symposium will address a broad array of critical topics in this important area, which has gained broad interest world-wide as nations recognize the need for improved energy efficiency.