The papers collected in this volume reproduce contributions by leading sch- ars to an international school and workshop which was organized and held with thegoaloftakinga snapshotofadiscipline undertumultuous growth. Indeed, the area of protein folding, docking and alignment is developing in response to needs for a mix of heterogeneous expertise spanning biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and statistics, among others. Some of the problems encountered in this area are not only important for the scientific challenges they pose, but also for the opportunities they disclose interms of medical and industrial exploitation. Atypicalexampleisofferedby protein-drug interaction (docking), a problem posing daunting computational problems at the crossroads of geometry, physics and chemistry, and, at the same time, a problem with unimaginable implications for the pharmacopoeia of the future. The schoolfocused on problems posed by the study of the mechanisms - hind protein folding, and explored different ways of attacking these problems under objective evaluations of the methods. Together with a relatively small core of consolidated knowledge and tools, important reffections were brought to this effort by studies in a multitude of directions and approaches. It is obviously impossible to predict which, if any, among these techniques will prove completely successful, but it is precisely the implicit dialectic among them that best conveys the current—avor of the field. Such unique diversity and richness inspired the format of the meeting, and also explains the slight departure of the present volume from the typical format in this series: the exposition of the current sediment is complemented here by a selection of qualified specialized contributions.