The Applied and Environmental Microbiology Gordon Research Conference (AEM-GRC) is one of the longest running of the Gordon Conferences and has been held every two years since 1950. The longevity and successfulness of this GRC is due to the quality of the scientists who have organized and participated in this conference and because of the profound importance of microorganisms to life on Earth, the environment, human health and industrial biotechnology. Areas covered by the conference include microbial contributions to biogeochemical cycles, climate change, production and consumption of greenhouse gases, bioremediation of contaminated land and water, as well as the use of microbes in human health and agriculture. Such research areas covered by the AEM-GRC have an immense impact on the environment and mankind and thus this GRC remains highly topical and a very vibrant research field. The primary objectives of the AEM GRCs are to present and discuss new, fundamental research findings on microorganisms, their activities in the environment, their ecosystem-level effects, and their environmental and/or commercial applications. The conference has always had a diverse theme of topics, covering the metabolic, physiologic and evolutionary diversity of microbial life, the complex roles that microorganisms play in life on Earth, and the multitude of applications of microbes in biotechnology, the food industry, the environment, agriculture, and medicine. The Conference has a longstanding tradition of stimulating advanced research in colleges and universities, research foundations, and government and industrial laboratories. To maintain this tradition, sessions on functional interactions between microbes and their population dynamics in a number of different and important environments will be held. The environments harboring microbes and how microbes adapt to these environments and interact with each other will be considered; for example the human microbiome, the deep biosphere and biogeochemical cycles, redox reactions and microbes in the oceans will be covered. The importance of new cultivation methods for microbes, the use of genomics and postgenomics in environmental and industrial microbiology, microbes as fuel and bioenergy sources and in biocatalysis and bioconversion processes will all provide platforms for established and newer researchers in the field to discuss a wide variety of aspects of the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental microbiology.