The Gordon Research Conference on Glycolipid and Sphingolipid Biology is the ninth in this series and, as in past conferences, will try to capture recent excitement in this field. Multiple functions have been ascribed to sphingolipids and glycolipids, and one of the challenges over the past couple of decades has been to make sense of the intracellular signaling functions ascribed, mainly to ceramide and sphingosine-1-phosphate, and of the functions ascribed to complex glycolipids, mainly in events that occur at the cell surface. Elucidation of the exact function(s) that specific sphingolipids and glycolipids play in cell physiology, and how these functions are integrated and regulated, will be a major focus of discussion at this conference.