The articles contained in this volume are related to presentations at the inter- tional "Conference on Optimal Control of Coupled Systems of Partial Di?erential Equations", held at the "Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach" from March, 2 to 8, 2008. The contributions by internationally well-known scientists in the ?eld of Applied Mathematics cover various topics as controllability, feedba- control,optimalitysystems,model-reductiontechniques,analysisandoptimalc- trol of ?ow problems and ?uid-structure interactions, as well as problems of shape and topology optimization. The applications considered range from the optimi- tion and control of quantum mechanical systems, the optimal design of airfoils, optimal control of crystal growth, the optimization of shape and topology in en- neering to switching or hybrid systems. The applications are thus across all time and length scales, and range from smooth to non-smooth models. The ?eld of optimization and control of systems governed by partial d- ferential equations and variational inequalities is a very active area of research in Applied Mathematics and in particular in numerical analysis, scienti?c c- puting and optimization with a growing impact on engineering applications.
In return, the ?eld bene?ts from fascinating and challenging applications in that new mathematical often multiscale-modeling and new numerical tools as well as novel optimization results and corresponding iterative strategies arerequired in order to handle these problems. In particular,it becomes amply clear that constraints have to be taken into account, both on the control- and design-variables as well as on the state variablesandthe domains oftheir governingmodels.