Abstract: The Hull-Strominger system was introduced in 1986 in physics as a geometric model for string backgrounds, and was proposed by Yau as a tool for geometrizing Reid’s fantasy. In this talk I will describe a geometric flow approach to solving for this system arising from the theory of generalized Ricci flow/pluriclosed flow. A key result is to give a natural interpretation of this flow in terms of the geometry of a holomorphic string algebroid. As a consequence of this we obtain a natural extension of Yau’s C^3 estimate for the complex Monge-Ampere equation, and global existence/convergence results for the flow. Joint work with M. Garcia-Fernandez and R. Gonzalez Molina.