IWOTA gathers leading experts from all over the world for an intense exchange of new results, information and opinions, and for tracing the future developments in the field.

In the even years, the IWOTA workshop is a satellite meeting to the biennial International Symposium on the Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS).

[5] From the humble beginnings in the early 80's,[1] the IWOTA workshops grew to become one of the largest continuing conferences attended by the community of researchers in operator theory.

[10] Proceedings of the IWOTA workshops appear in the Springer / Birkhäuser Verlag book series Operator Theory: Advances and Applications (OTAA)[11] (founder: Israel Gohberg).

IWOTA has received support from many sources, including the National Science Foundation[2][3][16] [17] ,[18][19] the London Mathematical Society,[20] the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council,[20] Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,[21] Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (Spain),[22] Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute,[23] National Board for Higher Mathematics,[24] International Centre for Theoretical Physics,[25] Indian Statistical Institute,[6] Korea Research Foundation,[26] United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund,[24] Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek,[27] the Commission for Developing Countries of the International Mathematical Union,[9][25] Stichting Advancement of Mathematics (Netherlands),[9] the National Research Foundation of South Africa,[25] and Birkhäuser Publishing Ltd. IWOTA is directed by a steering committee[28] which chooses the site for the next meeting, elects the chief local organizer(s) and insures the appearance of the enduring themes of IWOTA.

Ball, J. William Helton (Chair), Sanne ter Horst, Igor Klep, Christiane Tretter, Irene Sabadini, Victor Vinnikov and Hugo J. Woerdeman.