Twentieth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals: Presented as Volumes 77–79 of Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology Proceedings of the Twentieth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals Held May 3–7, 1998, Gatlinburg, Tennessee

active industrial participation in the organizing committee. Recently, the conference has begun a regular informal industrial roundtable (Session 4). This has become very popular as it allows industrial participants to speak more openly. For a broader perspective, R. James Woolsey, Former Direc­ tor of Central Intelligence Agency, gave an after-dinner address on "Wagon Trains for the 21st Century: The Role for Biorefineries. " He urged the attendees of the importance of their efforts to develop renewable, benign processes for the United States and the world based on both security and prosperity reasons. These related to energy supply, support of domestic agriculture, global warming, and other issues. With the Twentieth Symposium, we continued the tradition of pro­ viding an informal, congenial atmosphere that our participants find condu­ cive to pursuing technical discussion of program topics. The technical program consisted of 35 oral presentations, a roundtable forum, two spe­ cial topic discussions, and a poster session of 133 posters. This year, tech­ nical topics included: Session 1: Feedstocks: New Supplies and Processing Session 2: Applied Biological Research Session 3: Bioprocessing Research Session 4: Emerging Opportunities for Industrial Chemicals Session 5: Bioprocess Evaluation and Confirmation Session 6: Enzymatic Processes and Enzyme Production Special topic discussions were held on "Defining the Future Separa­ tions Needs Derived from Bioprocessing" by Earl Beaver, Monsanto Com­ pany, St.