The fields of cilia, mucus, and mucociliary interactions represent different scientific disciplines that are highly relevant to each other, yet rarely combined into a common meeting. The importance of these areas with respect to normal development, physiology and disease is well recognized, and the recent explosion in basic understanding of ciliary function as well as mucus composition and secretion have greatly increased possibilities for therapeutic intervention in these diseases at the molecular level. This conference offers an opportunity for basic and clinical scientists involved in these areas to present their latest progress to each other, to exchange ideas, and to discuss new state-of-the-art technologies. Topics to be covered in 2009 include:

• Cilia in Development
• Development of Airway Mucus Cells
• Signaling and Transcriptional Control
• Centriole Duplication and Ciliary Assembly
• Mucin Secretion
• Cilia and Mucus in Disease (including primary ciliary dyskinesia, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, goblet cell hyperplasia, mucous cell metaplasia, etc.)
• Mechanism and Control of Ciliary Motility
• Mucociliary Interactions

The meeting will open Sunday night with two talks from senior, eminent scientists who will give complementary overviews of the field and lay out the challenges for the future. This will be followed by a total of 8 sessions from Monday morning through Thursday evening; each morning session will have at least 6 speakers and each evening session will have at least 4 speakers. The goal is to present new data not yet published according to the tradition of GRCs. Discussion leaders will give brief introductions to each session to provide a perspective on the topics to be covered. Speakers for some shorter talks will be selected from submitted abstracts in order to include the latest "hot" results. In addition to the platform presentations, there will be two poster sessions.