The USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (Madison, Wisconsin) and the Wood-Based Composites Center of Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Virginia) co-sponsored a conference, held November 5-6, 2003, in Madison, Wisconsin, on the fundamentals of composite processing. The goals were to assess what we know, define what we need to know, and then establish the state of the art in hot-pressing of wood-based, particulate composites. Academic and industrial professionals from around North America and Europe were invited to participate because of their expertise and interest in this area of research. The workshop covered four critical topics associated with hot-pressing of composites: resin curing and bonding, press control, physics of hotpressing, and computer simulations of the pressing process. This report is the official record of the presentations and discussions that occurred during this workshop.