We publish in this volume a selection of the papers presented at the 22nd Conference on System Modeling and Optimization, held at the Politecnico di Torino in July 2005. The conference has been organized by the Mathematical Department of the Politecnico di Torino. The papers presented in this volume mostly concern stochastic and distributed systems, their control/optimization and inverse problems. IFIP is a multinational federation of professional and technical organiza­ tions concerned with information processes. It was established in 1959 under the auspices of UNESCO. IFIP still mantains friendly connections with spe­ cialized agencies of the UN systems. It consists of Technical Committees. The Seventh Technical Committee, established in 1972, was created in 1968 by A.V. Balakrishnan, J.L. Lions and G.I. Marchuk with a joint conference held in Sanremo and Novosibirsk. The present edition of the conference is dedicated to Camillo Possio, killed by a bomb during the last air raid overTorino, in the sixtieth anniversary of his death. The special session "On the Possio equation and its special role in aeroelasticity" was devoted to his achievements. The special session "Shape Analysis and optimization" commemorates the 100th anniversary of Pompeiu thesis.