The 9th International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA 9) will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, December 12-16, 2013. The conference aims to provide a forum for scientists, researchers, software developers, and practitioners to exchange ideas and approaches, to present research findings and state-of-the-art solutions, to share experiences on potentials and limits, and to open new avenues of research and developments, on all issues and topics related to optimization and its applications. All accepted papers will be published in conference proceedings, and papers with great quality will be invited for publications in special issues of several SCI journals.