This work, intended for research mathematicians, presents proceedings from the Japan-US Mathematics Institute (JAMI) Conference on Birational Algebraic Geometry in memory of Wei-Liang Chow, held at the John's Hopkins University in Baltimore in April 1996. These proceedings bring to light the many directions in which birational algebraic geometry is headed. Featured are: problems on special models, such as Fanos and their fibrations; adjunctions and subadjunction formulae; projectivity and projective embeddings; and more. Some papers reflect the frontiers of this rapidly-developing area of mathematics. Therefore, in these cases, only directions are given without complete explanations or proofs.