The third conference of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive Testing (IACAT) was held at the Sydney Convention Centre (www.scec.com.au), Australia from Sunday 12 to Tuesday 14 August 2012. This conference followed the successful first conference held in the Netherlands in June 2010 and the second conference held in Monterey in October 2011. It was jointly organized by the Australian Medical Council (AMC) (www.amc.org.au) and Excel Psychological and Educational Consultancy (EPEC) (www.epecat.com). The theme of the conference was “CAT – the past, present and future” and the program was designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas, research and applications of CAT. Besides invited keynote addresses and symposia by global leaders in the field, there were pre-conference workshops at the introductory and advanced levels.