This issue of Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering contains selected papers of the second Inverse Problems, Design and Optimization (IPDO2007) Symposium, held in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, 16–18 April 2007 (http://ipdos.org/ipdo2007/). The venue was the beautiful Newport Beachside Resort Hotel, which provided a friendly atmosphere for rich technical discussions among more than 100 participants from 19 countries. One hundred and ten oral presentations and six keynote lectures were delivered on several subjects related to the conference topics, making the IPDO2007 Symposium a truly international forum for the multidisciplinary fields of inverse problems, design and optimization. The IPDO Symposium was sponsored by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the US Army Research Office, Taylor & Francis Publishers, ESTECO – Mode Frontier, Sigma Technology – IOSO Technology Center, Florida International University and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
From the papers presented in the IPDO2007 Symposium, extended versions of 68 papers were submitted for possible publication in Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering. These papers underwent a stringent review process by several prominent researchers around the world. The review process resulted in 44 papers being accepted for IPSE journal publication, which will appear in several special issues, such as the present one.
The next IPDO Symposium will be held in Brazil in 2010.
Marcelo J. Colaço, Guest-editor
Helcio R.B. Orlande, Guest-editor