Following the first International Conference on Inverse Problems – Recent Theoretical Development and Numerical Approaches held at the City University of Hong Kong in 2002, the fifth International Conference was held again at the City University during December 13–17, 2010.
This fifth conference was jointly organized by Professor Yiu-Chung Hon (Co-Chair, City University of Hong Kong, HKSAR), Dr. Leevan Ling (Co-Chair, Hong Kong Baptist University, HKSAR), Professor Jin Cheng (Fudan University, China), Professor June-Yub Lee (Ewha Womans University, South Korea), Professor Gui-Rong Liu (University of Cincinnati, USA), Professor Jenn-Nan Wang (National Taiwan University, Taiwan), and Professor Masahiro Yamamoto (The University of Tokyo, Japan). It was agreed to hold the conference alternately among the above places (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) once every two years. The next conference will be held at the Southeast University (Nanjing, China) in October 2012.
The purpose of this series of conferences isto establish strong collaboration links among the universities of Asian-Pacific regions and worldwide leading researchers in inverse problems. The conference addressed both theoretical (mathematics), applied (engineering) and development aspects on inverse problems. It was intended to nurture Asian-American-European collaborations in the evolving interdisciplinary areas and was envisioned that the conference will lead to a long-term commitment and collaboration among the participated countries and researchers.
There were a total of more than 100 participants. A call for the submission of papers for proceedings was sent after the conference and after peer review processes, the papers in the current issue were finally accepted. These papers cover wide scopes, which reflect the current flourishing theoretical and numerical research for inverse problems.
Finally we wish to express our cordial thanks to all the keynote, plenary, and invited speakers and the members of the Advisory Board. We would like to thank the City University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Mathematical Society, the KC Wong Education Foundation, the Lee Hysan Foundation, and the Wei Lun Foundation for their generous financial support. Particularly, we thank Miss Lonn Chan for her excellent administrative and communicative works in making all the arrangements for the conference. We heartily thank Mr. Benjamin Hathaway, Production Editor of Taylor & Francis Group for his kind arrangements for this issue.
March 2012