This conference will facilitate shared insights and fuel advances in our understanding of two developmentally, evolutionarily, and clinically important populations of cells. The ultimate goal of the conference will be to accelerate the exchange of information across different model systems, and to promote technological innovations and a genome and proteome scale understanding of the mechanisms that govern the formation, and subsequent differentiation, of the neural crest and cranial placodes. Neural crest (NC) and cranial placodal cells make extensive contributions to embryonic structures, and are of central importance to understanding many congenital disorders. Neural crest-derived cells persist as stem cells into adulthood, and their study has provided broad insights into stem cell biology. Neural crest cells are a highly migratory population of cells during embryogenesis, understanding the regulation of their motility may also shed light on the misregulated invasiveness of metastatic tumor cells. The study of the neural crest and placodes has a rich history, and has been constantly growing, so it is somewhat surprising that to date there has not been a standing meeting dedicated to this topic.