The 8th International Symposium on Operations Research and Its Applications (ISORA 2009), organized by Asia-Pacific Operations Research Center (APORC) under APORS,the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), will be held in Zhangjiajie, China from September 20 to 22, 2009. ISORA is a series international symposium with goals to provide an international forum for scientists, researchers, educators, and practitioners in OR/MS 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 the theories and applications of Operations Research. The previous 7 ISORAs under the support of CAS and National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) were very successful and attracted many international scholars.