Marco Locatelli is Professor of Operations Research at the University of Parma, Italy. He serves on the editorial boards of Computational Optimization and Applications and the Journal of Global Optimization. His research interests include the theoretical and practical aspects of global optimization. Fabio Schoen is Professor of Operations Research at the University of Florence, Italy. He serves on the editorial boards of Computational Optimization and Applications and the Journal of Global Optimization; in 2011 he founded KKT, a start-up devoted to operations research. His main research interests include developing efficient algorithms for large-scale global optimization problems.

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: ComplexityChapter 3: HeuristicsChapter 4: Lower BoundsChapter 5: Branch and BoundChapter 6: ProblemsAppendix A: Basic Definitions and Results on ConvexityAppendix B: Notation.