The Eighteenth International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP2011), mainly sponsored by SJTU, was held in MAJESTY PLAZA, Shanghai, November 13. More than 250 representatives from over 40 countries and areas gathered at the conference. Zhang Wenjun, vice-president of SJTU, gave an opening speech on behalf of the university. Mr. Lv Baoliang, President of Asia Pacific Neural Network Assembly, and professor in SEIEE Department of Computer Science and Engineering,  presided over the conference.

      ICONIP is organized annually since 1994 by the Asia Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA). It's been ten years since the conference was held in Shanghai last time. The conference invited ten scholars of international standing to deliver plenary speeches, and they are Prof. Shun-ichi Amari from RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Prof.  Kunihiko Fukushima from Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute (Japan) Prof. Guo Aike, academician of the CAS and head of Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), Prof. Wang Deliang, editor-in-chief of Neural Networks, IEEE Fellow and professor at Ohio State University, Prof. Liu Derong, editor-in-chief of IEEE Trans. On Neural Networks and IEEE Fellow, Prof. Xu Lei, IEEE Fellow and professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prof. Yao Xin, former editor-in-chief of IEEE Trans. On Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Fellow and professor at University of Birmingham, Prof. Wang Jun, IEEE Fellow, and professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prof. Soo-Young Lee, Past-President of Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly, and professor in KAIST, and Prof. Nikola Kasabov, IEEE Fellow, Past-President of Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly, and professor at Auckland University of Technology.

      Altogether 262 papers are submitted to ICONIP2011, including seventy-eight papers from China, forty-nine from Japan, thirty-three from Australia, seventeen from Korea, ten from New Zealand, seven from France, seven from Taiwan, seven from Spanish and six from Dutch. The collection of these papers will be published by Springer in the series of Lecture Notes in Computer Science.