  In this paper, we investigate an optimal boundary control problem for a two
dimensional simplified Ericksen--Leslie system modelling the incompressible
nematic liquid crystal flows. The hydrodynamic system consists of the
Navier--Stokes equations for the fluid velocity coupled with a convective
Ginzburg--Landau type equation for the averaged molecular orientation. The
fluid velocity is assumed to satisfy a no-slip boundary condition, while the
molecular orientation is subject to a time-dependent Dirichlet boundary
condition that corresponds to the strong anchoring condition for liquid
crystals. We first establish the existence of optimal boundary controls. Then
we show that the control-to-state operator is Fr\'echet differentiable between
appropriate Banach spaces and derive first-order necessary optimality
conditions in terms of a variational inequality involving the adjoint state
variables.
