At the Material Research Society Spring 2013 meeting, held in San Francisco April 1–5, 2013, three symposia were held that focused on thermal-to-electric energy conversion and thermal transport: Symposium H: Nanoscale Thermoelectrics - Materials and Transport Phenomena - II, Symposium I: Materials for Solid-State Refrigeration, and Symposium V: Nanoscale Heat Transport - From Fundamentals to Devices. Although each technical session was focused on a different aspect of this subject, the intellectual commensurability of these symposia warranted the publication of their proceedings in a single volume.