This year's IWCSN will be the 9th International Workshop in the successful series of events organized consecutively in Bologna (2004), Hong Kong (2005), Vancouver (2006), Guilin (2007), Canberra (2008), Bristol (2009), Beijing (2010), and Melbourne (2011). The workshop will take place at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis September 5-7, 2012.

The ubiquity of complex networks in science and technology has been recently noted by researchers in various disciplines. Due to the availability of massive amount of data regarding large scale complex networks and the availability of computational resources to analyze them, there has been a resurgence in activity to study such networks, both from mathematical and applications viewpoints. These networks can be man-made (Internet, transportation networks), natural (neural networks, gene regulation networks), or spontaneously emerging (social networks). What is remarkable is the pervasiveness and ubiquity of complex networks in all aspects of science and technology, appearing in subjects such as social group dynamics, animal flocking, communication networks, emergence of complex structures, and the function and structure of biological networks. A common thread is the emergence of complexity from a large number of simple agents, be they neurons, people, computers, or autonomous vehicles. An important part of this complexity comes as a result of the way the agents are connected to and interact with each other and therefore it is important that we understand how the coupling topology affects properties of the ensemble system.

This strongly interdisciplinary workshop is intended to bring together mathematicians, physicists, biologists, social scientists, and engineers working on different aspects of network dynamics. The main focus of the meeting will be devoted to the impact of network structure on collective dynamics. This area is currently a hot research topic in all branches of science and technology, thanks in part to the ebullition about distributed systems, functional genomics, social and financial networks, and neuronal networks. The objectives of this workshop are twofold. First, it provides opportunities for participants to learn about state-of-the-art research in various related yet disparate fields. To this end, we plan to have overview talks in various areas and in-depth technical talks describing the latest research. A second objective of this workshop is to allow researchers and students from these diverse disciplines to interact, find common ground, share results and insights, and foster collaboration.

The 9th International Workshop on Complex Systems and Networks (IWCSN) is jointly organized by the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. We gratefully acknowledge the following sponsors: