AOSD is the premier conference on software modularity, with an emphasis on novel notions of modularity that crosscut traditional abstraction boundaries. The AOSD research track brings together leading researchers and practitioners working in the fields of software engineering, programming languages, and software systems. This volume consists of the papers to be presented as part of the research track at the 7th edition of AOSD, in 2008. A total of 79 papers were submitted, and 340 in-depth technical reviews were produced to rank the papers according to quality; the majority of papers received four reviews, many of the strong contenders received five reviews or more. Authors had an opportunity to respond to reviews, which helped clear up some misunderstandings. The research program committee met in Darmstadt, Germany to make the final selection of 17 papers. The program reflects how AOSD brings together different communities around the theme of crosscutting concerns: • Several papers investigate the benefits of combining aspects and generative programming for test case instantiation, program evolution, and modular compiler design. • Another group of papers is about using static analysis and knowledge representation techniques for reasoning about aspects and aspect-based modularity. • AOSD always has strong input from the programming language community; this year two sessions are dedicated to this theme, with contributions ranging from addressing static typing issues, to design of new language features, to implementation platforms for aspect-oriented languages. • Tool support is also a continuous theme of AOSD; this years research track includes three papers in this category. • Finally, the program includes presentations of interesting applications of aspect techniques to support adaptation and variability.