AbstractAn integrated part of modern design practice in both engineering and industry is simulation and optimization. Significant challenges still exist, though huge progress has been made in the last few decades. This 5th workshop on Computational Optimization, Modelling and Simulation (COMS 2014) at ICCS 2014 will summarize the latest developments of optimization and modelling and their applications in science, engineering and industry. This paper reviews the past developments, the state-of-the-art present and the future trends, while highlighting some challenging issues in these areas. It can be expected that future research should focus on the data intensive applications, approximations for computationally expensive methods, combinatorial optimization, and large-scale applications.