This special issue of Computers and Structures contains extended versions of the ‘shell papers' first presented at the First M.I.T. Conference on Computational Fluid and Solid Mechanics held at the M.I.T. Campus from 12–15 June 2001. Altogether 14 papers are selected from three different organized sessions entitled, respectively, ‘Nonlinear analysis of shells', ‘Reliable finite element methods for shells' and ‘Advanced problems in computational shell mechanics'. These papers provide a fairly complete review of the current research in shells regarding the topics which span from the refinements of nonlinear shell model (works of Brank, Korelc and Ibrahimbegovic or Kräzig and Jun) to mathematical analysis of the shell models (works of Auricchio, Beirao de Veiga and Lovadina, or Karamian-Surville, Sanchez-Hubert and Sanchez-Palencia, or yet Thompson and Thangavelu) and further towards the improved choices of shell finite element interpolations (works of Abed-Meraim and Combescure or Harnau and Schweizerhof or Cen, Long and Yao or Massin and Al Mikdad or Piltner or yet Wagner, Klinker and Gruttmann) to end with dynamics (works of Bauchau, Choi and Bottasso or yet Lubowiecka and Chroscielewski) and instability of shells (work of Amabili, Pellicano and Paidoussis). We hope that not only the great diversity of presented shell topics but also of writing styles and elaborated issues will give this special issue a much more lasting value and make it appealing to a very broad audience of the researchers and practitioners and last but not least the students interested in mathematical modeling and numerical analysis of shells. We hope that each reader finds something for himself and we would like to thank all the authors of this special issue for contributing to this goal, as well as Prof. K.J. Bathe of M.I.T. who organized the conference and kindly invited us as the guest editors of this special issue.