This book contains refereed papers presented at a remarkable interdisciplinary scientific meeting attended by a mix of leading biochemists and computer scientists held at DIMACS in March 1995. It describes the development of a variety of new methods which are being developed for attacking the important problem of molecular structure. This book focuses on global optimization algorithms and heuristics for molecular conformation and protein folding problems. It presents the most efficient recent algorithms. It covers a spectrum of algorithmic issues and applications.