In the last few decades optimal control has become a well-established research area and it finds several applications in many scientific fields, ranging from science and engineering to economics and social sciences.

In the recent literature, many significant contributions to both deterministic and stochastic contexts have been provided by several authors. This special issue aims at creating a multidisciplinary forum of discussion on recent advances in optimal control as well as new applications to biology, economics, ecology, engineering, finance, management, and medicine. The accepted papers will show a diversity of new developments in these areas. This issue accepts high quality articles containing original research results and survey articles of exceptional merit, and it will let the readers of this journal know more about this fundamental area of mathematics.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Advances in optimal control theory
• Optimal control theory and spatial heterogeneity
• Numerical algorithms for optimal control
• Environmental sustainability and economic growth
• Optimal control in biological systems
• Optimal control theory in ecology
• Optimal control/spread of disease
• Optimal control in medicine
• Optimal control in engineering
• Optimal campaign of education/vaccination
• Optimal control of transmission of infectious disease
• Optimal control theory in oncology
• Optimal control theory in finance
• Resource allocation and management
• Species augmentation
• Stochastic optimal control