Inverse Problems are found in many areas of engineering mechanics and there are many successful applications e.g. in non-destructive testing and characterization of material properties by ultrasonic or X-ray techniques, thermography, etc. Generally speaking, inverse problems are concerned with the determination of the input and the characteristics of a system, given certain aspects of its output. Mathematically, such problems are ill-posed and have to be overcome through development of new computational schemes, regularization techniques, objective functionals, and experimental procedures.
This volume contains a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the International Symposium on Inverse Problems in Engineering Mechanics (ISIP2001), held in February of 2001 in Nagano, Japan, where recent development in inverse problems in engineering mechanics and related topics were discussed.
The following general areas in inverse problems in engineering mechanics were the subjects of the ISIP2001: mathematical and computational aspects of inverse problems, parameter or system identification, shape determination, sensitivity analysis, optimization, material property characterization, ultrasonic non-destructive testing, elastodynamic inverse problems, thermal inverse problems, and other engineering applications. These papers can provide a state-of-the-art review of the research on inverse problems in engineering mechanics.

Nowadays inverse problems and applications in science and engineering represent an extremely active research field. The subjects are related to mathematics, physics, geophysics, geochemistry, oceanography, geography and remote sensing, astronomy, biomedicine, and other areas of applications. This monograph reports recent advances of inversion theory and recent developments with practical applications in frontiers of sciences, especially inverse design and novel computational methods for inverse problems. The practical applications include inverse scattering, chemistry, molecular spectra data processing, quantitative remote sensing inversion, seismic imaging, oceanography, and astronomical imaging. The book serves as a reference book and readers who do research in applied mathematics, engineering, geophysics, biomedicine, image processing, remote sensing, and environmental science will benefit from the contents since the book incorporates a background of using statistical and non-statistical methods, e.g., regularization and optimization techniques for solving practical inverse problems.