This volume contains thirteen papers and one extended abstract based on talks given at the symposium "Inverse Problems and Optimal Design in Industry" which took place from July 8 to 10, 1993, in Philadelphia. This symposium was jointly organized by ECMI an SIAM, with the cooperation of IMA (Minnesota), INRIA, and SIMA . The organizing committee was co-chaired by the editors of this volume and included, in addition, V. Boffi (SIMAI, Italy) G. Chavent (INRIA, France), D. Colton (University of Delaware, USA) and A. Friedman (IMA, USA). Financial support from the U. S. Department of Energy is gratefully acknowledged. The primary aim of this meeting, which is reflected in this volume, was to bring to gether mathematicians working in industry. who treat inverse and optimal design problems in their practical work and mathematiCians from academia who are active in mathem atical research in these fields in order to strenghten the contacts between industry and academia. Thus, this volume contains (refereed) papers both on inverse and optimal design problems as they appear in European, American and Japanese industry, and on analytical and numerical techniques for solving such types of problems. The topics treated include multi-disciplinary design optimization in aerospace industry, inverse problems in steel industry, inverse and optimum design problems in optics and photographic science, inverse electromagnetic problems including impedance imaging, and inverse problems in the petroleum industry. There were two styles of presentation of topics. One was discussion sessions."

1 Industrial Mathematics in Linz The Johannes-Kepler-University is situated in Linz, which is the industrial center of Austria. This location provides unique opportunities for cooperation between in- dustry and a university which derives its name from one of the most eminent ap- plied mathematicians of all times. The mathematics department was founded in the late Sixties, the first students graduated in 1974. In these boom times, they had no problems of finding jobs in industry. However, their employers were then more interested in their general training than in their specific mathematical skills. To change this, the department decided to actively seek cooperation with industry in what we called "problem seminars", where students were trained to solve (under guidance) real-world problems from local industry. Groundwork was already laid by a curriculum with special emphasis on numerical analysis, statistics, and optim- ization. This work in problem seminars usually evolved into diploma theses. Inci- dentally, in all projects presented here, students were involved at some stages. While the original motivation for cooperation with industry was educational, it turned out that most problems presented to us also led to interesting mathematical problems, so that nowadays our motivation is as much scientific as educational. When cooperating with industry, one cannot expect that the problems to be solved fall into one's special mathematical interest.