The design of fuel cells is a challenging endeavour due to the multitude of physical phenomena that need to be simultaneously optimized in order to achieve proper fuel cell operation. Fuel cell design is a multi-objective, multi-variable problem. In order to design fuel cells by computational design, a mathematical formulation of the design problem needs to be developed. The problem can then be solved using numerical optimization algorithms and a computational fuel cell model. In the past decade, the fuel cell community has gained momentum in the area of numerical design. In this article, research aimed at using numerical optimization to design fuel cells and fuel cell systems is reviewed. The review discusses the strengths, limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of optimization formulations and numerical optimization algorithms, and insight obtained from previous studies. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.