Although many of the phenomena observed in granular materials are still not yet fully understood important contributions have been made to furthering our understanding of many new aspects using modern tools from statistical mechanics. Such tools include those applied to disordered systems phase transitions instabilities or intermittent behavior and the performance of discrete particle simulations on the latest and most powerful computers. However many of these results were only to be found until now scattered throughout the physics literature. Furthermore physicists are often unaware of the theories and results published by engineers in more specialized technical journals. Granular Matter will thus serve as a platform of communication between reseachers of various disciplines who are involved in the basic research of granular media. It shall help to establish a common language and gather articles under one single roof that up to now have been spread over many journals specialized in a variety of other fields.