Although that the biological and medical importance of complex carbohydrates and glycoconjugates are firmly established, many of the molecular details of how these intriguing compounds mediate their functions are not well-understood. Unraveling these molecular interactions is complicated by the facts that technologies for studying complex carbohydrates are not as well-developed as for nucleic acid and protein science. For example, there are no convenient methods for sequencing the structures of complex carbohydrates. Furthermore, it is difficult to isolate well-defined oligosaccharides from natural sources. The latter problem is compounded by the fact that the chemical synthesis of complex carbohydrates is much more complicated than that of peptides and oligonucleotides. In addition, there are no general strategies to design and synthesize potent and selective inhibitors for carbohydrate processing enzymes and lectins. Another important issue is that glycoproteins cannot be produced in simple bacterial expression systems, complicating the obtaining of reasonable quantities of material. Glycosidic linkages of oligosaccharides are flexible and there are no robust methods to compute or experimentally determine their conformational properties. Problems of this magnitude can only be addressed by uniting scientists from different disciplines that as a group can develop integrated approaches to address specific problems in glycobiology. A major aim of the Gordon Research Conference on Carbohydrates is to bring together scientists from different disciplines such as synthetic chemistry, biological chemistry, medicinal chemistry, enzymology, structural biology and biochemistry to assess progress and explore new research areas.