Global optimization is a multi-disciplinary research field that deals with the characterization and computation of global minima and/or maxima of nonlinear, nonconvex, nonsmooth and discrete functions. Global optimization problems are frequently encountered in modeling real world systems for a very broad range of applications including aerospace and civil engineering, chemical and process engineering, computational biology and bioinformatics, computational materials science, clustering and pattern recognition, computer vision and robotics, cryptography and data mining, electrical and control engineering,  information and technology management, industrial and systems engineering, communication and information network design, intelligent information and security, management science and operations research, mathematical economics and financial engineering, mechanical and structural engineering, neuroscience and cognition,  refining and petrochemicals, reliability and quality engineering, signal and image processing, tomography and seismic optimization, production planning and scheduling, transportation and logistics, etc.

With the rapid development and deployment of practical global optimization methodologies in the last thirty years, more and more scientists in diverse disciplines have been using global optimization techniques and algorithms to solve their respective problems. Global optimization is playing a pivoting role in the development of modern engineering and sciences. The field has become mature enough to call for the establishment of a world congress.

The First World Congress on Global Optimization in Engineering & Science (WCGO2009) will be held on 1-5 June 2009 in Hunan University and Zhangjiajie, Hunan, China. A primary goal of this congress is to offer an international forum for researchers and practitioners in the field to exchange ideas and present original research work on the theory and applications of global optimization. The conference will be organized by Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hunan University, co-sponsored by Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

All accepted papers will be published in the Lecture Notes in Operations Research published by World Publishing Corporation (ISTP indexed) after congress. Some selected high-quality papers will be published in the special issues of several SCI/SCI-E indexed main-stream international journals including Journal of Global Optimization (SCI), Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization (SCI), Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making (SCI ), and Optimization Letters (EI).