Historically, porous metals have focused on structural applications where specific stiffness and strength were optimized, using conventional casting, sintering, cutting, machining and joining techniques to create ductile and strong porous metallic structure. For such load-bearing applications, porous metals are studied and used in many sectors, e.g., transportation, architecture, and medicine (for bone-replacement implants). This special issue of the Journal of Materials Research contains articles that were accepted in response to an invitation for manuscripts.