Combinatorial optimization is a multidisciplinary scientific area, lying in the interface of three major scientific domains: mathematics, theoretical computer science and management.  The three volumes of the Combinatorial Optimization series aim to cover a wide range  of topics in this area. These topics also deal with fundamental notions and approaches as with several classical applications of combinatorial optimization.

Concepts of Combinatorial Optimization, is divided into three parts:
- On the complexity of combinatorial optimization problems, presenting basics about worst-case and randomized complexity;
- Classical solution methods, presenting the two most-known methods for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems, that are Branch-and-Bound and Dynamic Programming;
- Elements from mathematical programming, presenting fundamentals from mathematical programming based methods that are in the heart of Operations Research since the origins of this field.

Vangelis Paschos is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Paris-Dauphine and Chairman of the LAMSADE (Laboratory for the Modeling and the Analysis of Decision Aiding Systems). His research interests include complexity theory, the theory of the polynomial approximation of NP-hard problems, probabilistic combinatorial optimization and on-line computation. He is the author of more than a 100 research papers and is a member of the editorial board of several international scientific journals.