This volume of the Journal of Global Optimization consists of the papers presented at XVI Baikal International School-Seminar<<Optimization Methods and Their Applications>>, which took place on June 30th–July 6th, 2014, on Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal, Russia. Baikal School-Seminars have been held every three years at different places around the lake, since 1969, and we hope that this tradition will be continued. The initiator and organizer of the first twelve School-Seminars was an expert in global optimization, professor Valerian P. Bulatov. Starting in 1989 the School-Seminars became International.

XVI School-Seminar was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of professor Oleg V. Vasiliev (1939–2002) a well known and recognized specialist in optimal control and optimization. XVI School-Seminar attracted 94 participants from 10 countries. The scientific program contained plenary lectures and papers presented at 5 sections: optimal control, discrete optimization, continuous optimization, equilibrium and bilevel programming and optimization methods in inverse problems.

We would like to express our gratitude to all authors of the presented papers as well as reviewers for their expertise and comments. We are also very thankful to the following institutes and organizations for their valuable support: Melentiev Energy System Institute, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk; Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Network Analysis of National Research University<<Higher School of Economics>>, Nizhny Novgorod; Irkutsk State University; Russian Foundation for Basic Research.