The 2013 Gordon Conference on Tropical Infectious Diseases: from bench to field, will present cutting edge research on the most prevalent and medically important tropical infectious diseases (TIDs), with special emphasis on research areas that have made significant recent progress. This will be the third time that this particular GRC has been held, and it will retain the general thematic organization of the very successful conference last held in 2011. The intent is to gather a multidisciplinary community of scientists discussing basic and field based or translational research in TIDs. The 2013 Conference will include disease focused sessions on arboviral diseases (including dengue), filariasis, malaria, leishmaniasis, and tuberculosis. In addition, there will be two thematic sessions, one on enteric infections, vaccines, and nutrition, and the other on vector physiology and disease control. For each session, invited speakers who are at the forefront of their respective fields will strive to discuss how progress made at the bench is being translated to actions in the field, emphasizing interventions based on treatment, vaccination, or interrupting the transmission cycle in the vector or reservoir hosts. An important goal of the Conference is to attract junior scientists and graduate students, including those from disease endemic countries, to present their work in poster format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. Some poster presenters will be selected for short oral presentations. The Conference will be held in a historic seaside hotel in Galveston, Texas, which offers relaxing beaches and one of the best-preserved concentrations of Victorian architecture in the country. The presentations of cutting edge research, along with the programmed discussion sessions and opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, will serve to greatly enrich the community of multidisciplinary scientists working on TIDs.