On Monday October 12, 2009, Israel Gohberg, president of the IWOTA Steering Committee, passed away at the age of 81. Israel Gohberg was the visionary and driving force of IWOTA. Under his leadership, from the humble beginnings in the early 80's, the IWOTA workshops grew to become prime events in the community of researchers in operator theory and applications. For the time being the four vice presidents will take care of the daily affairs of the Steering Committee.
The IWOTA workshops bring together mathematicians and engineers working in operator theory and its applications to related fields, ranging from classical analysis, differential and integral equations, complex and harmonic analysis to mathematical physics, mathematical system and control theory, signal processing and numerical analysis. IWOTA gathers leading experts from all over the world for an intensive exchange of information and opinion, and for tracing the future developments in the field. Usually, in the even years, the IWOTA workshop is a satellite meeting to the biennial international symposium on the Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS). Proceedings of the IWOTA workshops appear in the book series Operator Theory: Advances and Applications (OT), Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Boston, Berlin.
IWOTA is directed by a Steering Committee which chooses the site for the next meeting and elects the chief local organizer(s). The sub-themes of an IWOTA workshop and the lecturers are chosen by the local organizing committee.
T. Ando (Sapporo), J.A. Ball - Vice President (Blacksburg), H. Bart (Rotterdam), H. Bercovici (Bloomington), V. Bolotnikov (Williamsburg), R.E. Curto (Iowa City), A.F. dos Santos (Lisbon), A. Dijksma (Groningen), M. Dritschel (Newcastle), H. Dym (Rehovot), C. Foias (Bloomington), J.J. Grobler (Potchefstroom), G.J. Groenewald (Potchefstroom), J.W. Helton - Vice President (La Jolla), I.B. Jung (Seoul), M.A. Kaashoek - Vice President (Amsterdam), M. Klaus (Blacksburg), H. Langer (Vienna), W.Y. Lee (Seoul), C.V.M. van der Mee (Cagliari), R. Mennicken (Regensburg), N.K. Nikolskii (Bordeaux), V. Olshevsky (Storrs), L. Rodman – Vice President (Williamsburg), S. Seatzu (Cagliari), I. Spitkovsky (Williamsburg), G. Stampfli (Bloomington), N. Young (Newcastle), N. Vasilevski (Mexico City).
IWOTA-2010 will be held at Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany; dates July 12-16, 2010 (with Sunday July 11 as arrival day and Saturday July 17 as departure day). Organizing committee (chair): K.-H. Foerster. See http://www3.math.tu-berlin.de/iwota_2010/.