MTNS, the International Symposium on the Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems is a major conference in the general area of mathematical systems theory. The symposium is interdisciplinary and attracts mathematicians, engineers and researchers working in all aspects of systems theory. The symposium is organized every two years and traditionally covers areas involving a wide range of research directions in mathematical systems, networks and control theory. Mathematical methods which play a role in the areas mentioned above stem from a broad range of fields of pure and applied mathematics, including ordinary and partial differential equations, real and complex analysis, numerical analysis, probability theory and stochastic analysis, operator theory, linear and commutative algebra as well as algebraic and differential geometry. There are a wide range of applications ranging from problems in biology, communications and mathematical finance to problems in chemical engineering, aerospace engineering and robotics.
The meetings are scheduled by an international steering committee. The eighteen previous MTNS meetings were held in:
| 1973 : | College Park, Maryland, USA | 1975 : | Montreal, Canada |
| 1977: | Lubbock, Texas, USA | 1979: | Delft, Netherlands |
| 1981: | Santa Monica, California, USA, | 1983: | Beer Sheva, Israel |
| 1985: | Stockholm, Sweden, | 1987: | Phoenix, Arizona, USA |
| 1989: | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 1991: | Kobe, Japan |
| 1993: | Regensburg, Germany | 1996: | St. Louis, Missouri, USA |
| 1998: | Padova, Italy | 2000: | Perpignan, France |
| 2002: | Notre Dame, Indiana, USA | 2004: | Leuven, Belgium |
| 2006: | Kyoto, Japan | 2008: | Blacksburg, Virginia, USA |