On behalf of the 32nd Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, we would like to welcome you to beautiful Clearwater Beach, Florida. We have developed and planned an excellent program covering a broader range of topics related to the building of the new biomass fuels and chemicals industry than seen in previous Symposia.

We have a dozen sessions, running two in parallel, spanning three and a half days, including two large poster sessions. The new industry requires feedstock, so we have provided a session on development of new biomass sources, and a session on production and logistics to get feedstock to the biorefinery. Advances in pretreatment, microbial conversion and enzyme advances will be presented in two sessions each divided between fundamental and more applied aspects. Developments in bioprocessing and separations will be discussed in one session.