<div class="tex2jax_process">Commutative Algebra, the study of commutative rings and their modules, has a long and prestigious history. An entirely new dimension opened up when Bruno Buchberger discovered an algorithm to compute Gröbner bases, namely the possibility to symbolically calculate with these objects. In this school we start by introducing the participants to the basics of the theory. Then we branch out and convey a wide range of applications that these fundamental techniques have produced in the last decades.