MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES 

Inverse problems, design theories and multi-objective constrained optimization strategies are three areas of advanced research that are rapidly becoming of common use by practicing engineers and designers. Consequently, there is an upsurge in the number of separate scientific meetings in each of these three general areas. The main objective of the INVERSE PROBLEMS, DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION (IPDO) SYMPOSIUM is to bring together the three communities of researchers (inverse problems, design theory and evolutionary optimization experts) and provide a common forum for presenting different applications, problems and solution concepts. 

The three major areas of research to be covered by the IPDO Symposium have a number of things in common. For example, many methodologies for solving inverse problems employ optimization algorithms. On the other hand, optimization techniques generally do not employ methods of inverse design, which could potentially reduce the number of time-consuming analysis required by the typical evolutionary algorithms. Similarly, design theory is commonly not used by the optimization community, where formulation of the appropriate multiple objectives and system-of-systems design formulations are often performed using intuition and personal experience. 

The IPDO Symposium will offer the first-of-a-kind and, therefore unique, international forum that should provide an excellent basis for cross-fertilization of ideas and creation of new synergistic approaches and methodologies combining these three fields of research.