Edited by Professor Hemant Bhargava and co-editor Nong Ye of Arizona State University, the first section of Computational Modeling and Problem Solving in the Networked World, “Perspectives on Computation,” focuses on the reflective and integrative thinking that is critical to contemporary science. This section presents philosophical perspectives on computation, covering a variety of traditional and newer modeling, solving, and explaining mathematical models.

The “Machine Learning & Heuristics” section includes articles that study machine learning and computational heuristics, and is followed by the “Algorithm Performance” section that addresses issues in performance testing of solution algorithms and heuristics. These two sections demonstrate the richness of thinking about solution methods that is made possible by the confluence of Computer Science and Operations Research.

The final “Applications” section demonstrates how these and other methods at the interface can be used to help solve problems in the real world, covering e-commerce, workflow, electronic negotiation, music, parallel computation, and telecommunications.