The Ninth International Symposium on Neural Networks (ISNN 2012) will be held in Shenyang, China during July 11-14, 2012, following the successes of previous events. Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province in northeastern China with a long history and rich heritages. Shenyang was the capital of the Manchu people in the 17 th century and is the biggest city in northeastern China today. Shenyang is now an important political, industrial, and cultural center in China, and serves as the transportation and commercial hub of Northeastern China. The city has a solid infrastructure, a good land and air transport network, and abundant natural resources. ISNN 2012 aims to provide a high-level international forum for scientists, engineers, and educators to present the state of the art of neural network research and applications in related fields. The symposium will feature plenary speeches given by world renowned scholars, regular sessions with broad coverage, and special sessions focusing on popular topics.
     Prospective authors are invited to contribute high-quality papers to ISNN 2012. In addition, proposals for special sessions within the technical scopes of the symposium are solicited. Special sessions, to be organized by internationally recognized experts, aim to bring together researchers in special focused topics. Papers submitted for special sessions are to be peer-reviewed with the same criteria used for the contributed papers. Researchers interested in organizing special sessions are invited to submit formal proposals to ISNN 2012. A special session proposal should include the session title, a brief desc**tion of the scope and motivation, names, contact **rmation and brief biographical **rmation on the organizers.