This 5-day meeting, sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in partnership with the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich (FWF) was organised by Marie-Claire Bellissent-Funel (Lab. Léon Brillouin (CEA-CNRS), CEA Saclay) and John Dore (School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent). It took place in the Universitatszcentrum (University of Innsbruck), in the ski resort of Obergurgl, Austria, from 8–13 December 2007. The main aim of the meeting was to bring together various groups working on the characteristics of water in a wide range of different conditions, particularly in relation to the difference in behaviour of bulk water and water in close proximity to an interface. Another focus was on the properties of 'solid water' and the free time during the afternoon provided a good opportunity for studying ice interfaces in a different context as the snow conditions were good for ski-ing! An outline of the programme is contained in the PDF file associated with this preface. There was a wide representation encompassing 30 countries and 130 scientists drawn from different science disciplines. Furthermore there was a good range of young scientists, who made an excellent contribution to the poster session. There were, of course, many animated discussions away from the conference room and the feedback forms showed that almost everyone (96%!) felt that they had enjoyed the sessions and had learned something new. There was support for a further conference on this theme in the future. Inevitably, many of the speakers presented information that was in preparation for publication elsewhere and therefore our compilation of some papers in this brief report is not fully representative of the range of topics discussed at the meeting. Further information on specific work reported at the meeting can be obtained by following the author list through the Web of Science or by contacting the authors directly. We report eight short papers from the meeting as well as five extended abstracts. 1. Initial Filling Mechanism of Predominant Water Adsorption on Hydrophobic Slit-Shaped Carbon Nanopores Tomonori Ohba and Katsumi Kaneko 2. Computer simulation study of water/hydrocarbon interfaces: effects of hydrocarbon branching on interfacial properties Janamejaya Chowdhary and Branka M Ladanyi 3. Thermodynamics of supercooled water in solutions D Corradini, P Gallo and M Rovere 4. Transferability of polarizable models for ion-water electrostatic interaction Marco Masia 5. Quantum chemical study of water impact on the calcium hydroxyapatite V D Khavryuchenko, O V Khavryuchenko, V V Lisnyak 6. Neutron Scattering Studies of Dynamic Crossover Phenomena in a Coupled System of Biopolymer and Its Hydration Water Sow-Hsin Chen, F Mallamace, X Q Chu, C Kim, M Lagi, A Faraone, E Fratini, P Baglioni 7. Looking for the best experimental conditions to detail the protein solvation shell in a binary aqueous solvent via Small Angle Scattering Maria Grazia Ortore, Raffaele Sinibaldi, Francesco Spinozzi, Andrea Carbini, Flavio Carsughi and Paolo Mariani 8. Influence of the water molecules near surface of viral protein on virus activation process S O Shepelenko, A S Salnikov, S V Rak, E P Goncharova and A B Ryzhikov 9. Optical Kerr effect measurements on supercooled water: the experimental perspectives P. Bartolini, A Taschin, R Eramo, R Righini and R Torre 10. Structural studies of water confined in a confined hydrophobic environment J C Dore, M-C Bellissent-Funel, A Burian, H P Castricum, J Jelassi, K Kaneko, T Ohba, H Tanaka and J B W Webber 11. Dynamic transition and glassy behaviour in hydrated proteins F Mezei, M Russina, G Chen, H Frauenfelder, P W Fenimore, P Falus and B Farago 12. Relation between frequency and H bond length in heavy water: Towards the understanding of the unusual properties of H bond dynamics in nanoporous media S Pommeret, R Musat, J-P Renault, J-C Leicknam and S Bratos 13. Quantum confinement of hydrogen in ice based clathrates M Russina, E Kemner, M Celli, L Ulivi and F Mezei Marie-Claire Bellissent-Funel (marie-claire.bellissent-funel@cea.fr) John Dore (j.c.dore@kent.ac.uk)