The interactions between beating cilia, mucus, and fluids with varying viscoelastic properties play a fundamental role in human biology. Mucociliary clearance is now recognized as a key component of human innate immune defense mechanisms. Although classic mucociliary interactions are predominant in respiratory epithelium, they also occur in multiple other organ systems. In the respiratory tract, a deficiency in any part of these processes (mucous, cilia, fluids) impacts multiple disease states, including primary ciliary dyskinesia, Cystic Fibrosis, asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis. Primary individual alterations in ciliary-fluid interactions can also lead to pathology in ciliopathies. Collectively, 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 scientific meeting. The 2011 Gordon Research Conference on Cilia, Mucus and Mucociliary Interactions will feature a wide range of topics on Development, signaling and transcriptional control of ciliary and mucous components, Fundamental processes in mucins and cilia, Structure-function relationships in cilia and mucus, Genetic approaches to mucociliary diseases, Diseases of cilia and mucus, Mucociliary interactions, and Cilia and fluid interactions. The Conference will bring together a collection of investigators from a variety of scientific disciplines (including biochemistry, molecular, cell and structural biology, physiology, molecular genetics, and imaging) that are at the forefront of their fields. Additionally, the conference will provide opportunities for junior scientists and graduate students to present their work and exchange ideas with leaders in the fields. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, will serve as a forum where basic and clinical researchers from diverse disciplines can meet, interact, and bring cross-disciplinary understanding and new basic findings to the translational stage, with the ultimate goal of improving diagnosis and treatment for diseases and disorders involving both cilia and mucus.