Granular materials, whether dry or in combination with a fluid, are ubiquitous in both nature and industry and show a rich variety of complex phenomena. As the physical underpinnings of these behaviors continue to be revealed and new phenomena discovered, there has been sustained and strong international research from multiple disciplines including chemical, civil and mechanical engineering, physics, applied mathematics, and earth and planetary sciences. In addition, there are intriguing links between granular materials and heterogeneous systems such as glasses, colloids, emulsions and foams. This 6th Gordon Conference on Granular and Granular-Fluid Flows will afford active researchers in the field an opportunity to learn about recent discoveries and to engage in discussions with their colleagues. Invited speakers and discussion leaders will catalyze these interactions by addressing a range of topics such as dilute and dense flows, fragility and jamming, phase transitions and instabilities, multiphase flows, acoustics, the role of friction and cohesion, geophysical phenomena, and segregation and mixing.

We thank the National Science Foundation (ENG-CBET, ENG-CMMI, GEO-EAR, DMR-CMMT, DMR-CMP, and MSP-OAS) and the Topical Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics of the American Physical Society for providing support for early-career scientists to attend the conference.