First XLIC Training School will take place in Zaragoza, at the premises of Z-CAM (http://www.z-cam.es/). It will be organized in two modules of one week each. Attendees can participate in one or both of them.

• Module 1. March 9-13, 2015
  Molecular Excited States (Download tentative program)
• Module 2. March 16-20, 2015
  New Computational Methods for Attosecond Molecular Processes (Download tentative program)

TRAINING PROGRAM: Contents of the courses and list of trainers can be checked, for each module, in the documents linked above. Nevertheless, interested participants are encouraged to check for updates on each module webpage .

ACCOMMODATION: Local organizers have arranged accommodation  for all registered participants in the same hotels (Apartamentos Los Sitios and Apartamentos Los Girasoles), where apartments (multiple occupancy with individual rooms) with a kitchen area are offered during the duration of the schools (arriving on Sunday and leaving on Friday). Participats attending both modules can also stay in the apartment during the weekend.
If you are interested in this option, please, contact local organisers as soon as possible to confirm booking details. Payment should be done directly by each participant before leaving.

MEALS: Lunches during training days will be covered for all participants. Dinner and breakfast will not be included.

FEES: There are no registration fees.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT: XLIC Action will offer grants to partially cover the participation of young researchers involved in the Action. Each participant will receive a notification with information on the amount granted. of grants and amount will depend on the number of requests for funding.

REGISTRATION is now closed. Participants can check the status of their application at CECAM website (separately for each module), using their CECAM account.

REIMBURSEMENT: Each participant should pay his/her own expenses to the Hotel before leaving. Those participants selected for funding will receive a letter indicating the fixed amount granted. After the event, reimbursement will be done subject to the submission of a payment request form and the effective attendance to the school. No receipts will be asked for.

LOCATION: The activities will take place at the R+D Building (BIFI) in the campus of the University of Zaragoza in the north of the city (ZCAM CONFERENCE BUILDING: Campus Río Ebro – Edificio I+D; C/Mariano Esquillor s/n. 50018 Zaragoza)

HOW TO REACH ZARAGOZA: You can arrive in Zaragoza by plane, train, bus and car. If you come from abroad and you land at either Madrid or Barcelona airports, then the train or the bus are usually the best options for the last part of the trip up to Zaragoza.

• By plane: The airport is situated 9 km from the city. At present, there are regular flights to Frankfurt (weekdays), Rome, London, Milan and Lisbon and domestic flights to Madrid and Barcelona. Connections from the airport to the city are by bus and taxi. You can make a flight search in the web sites of the companies that operate with the Zaragoza airport: Iberia, Air Europa, and Ryanair (low cost company).
• By train: Zaragoza has a new railway station (Estación de Delicias), with a high‐speed connection to Madrid and Barcelona (AVE train). The railway station is at the same place as bus and taxi stops, and car rental services. Zaragoza is also connected by train to other major Spanish cities such as Valencia, Granada, Sevilla and Málaga. Timetable information can be obtained at the Spanish Railway Company web site: Renfe.
• By bus: Zaragoza is connected by bus to the main Spanish cities. You can search the routes and timetables in the web site of the Spanish bus company ALSA.
• By car: Zaragoza has an excellent communication network, and is linked to the North of Spain: through a motor way to Bilbao (A‐68) and Barcelona (A‐2), and the Aragón highway connecting to Madrid (N‐II).

The 3rd meeting organized in the framework of Working Group 2 of COST Action CM1204 (XUV/X-ray light and fast ions for ultrafast chemistry) will take place in Leiden (Netherlands) from May 11 to 13, 2015. It will be an expert meeting centered on Large Interstellar Molecules: “Energetic Processing of Large Interstellar Molecules”.

Three key questions will be addressed during the workshop:

• Which experimental techniques do we need to develop to probe correlated electronic-vibrational dynamics in photo-activated molecules?
• What is the functional role of non-equilibrium vibrational motion for energy and charge transport as well as energy storage in biomolecules? How are these specific molecular motions “selected”?
• Do we have an appropriate theoretical framework to describe and understand these phenomena? Is the predictive power of the current theories enough to accurately predict dynamics and functionality?

More information can be found on the meeting website: http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2015/725/info.php3?wsid=725&venue=Snellius

FINANCIAL SUPPORT:
The participation of a limited number of XLIC participants and speakers will be supported with the Action budget. Participants entitled for reimbursement should have been informally notified about their status.

By the end of March, all participants will receive an official invitation to the meeting confirming their eligibility status and highligting some of the COST rules for reimbursement which should be carefully examined before incurring any expense in:

• COST Vademecum, page 19-23, and /or
• the instructions on how to fill the Travel Reimbursement Request Form (TRR)

Since the budget allocated for the meeting is limited, it is highly reccomended keeping the claims for meals and accomodation at the actual level of expensiture during the meeting. Nevertheless. in compliance with COST rules, this subsistence expenses will be reimbursed on the basis of flat rates (no need to show invoices). The applicable flat rates for this meeting, as approved by XLIC Management Committee, are 100 EUR for accommodation and 0 EUR for meals.

For travel expenses actual costs can be claimed on the basis of the receipts provided. (Any restriction applying to travel expenses will be notified to each participant entitled for reimbursement)

IMPORTANT: Participants selected for reimbursement are kindly asked to keep their expenses as low as possible to ensure a wide distribution of the Action budget.

The submission of claims shall be done after the meeting, but, for any non-regular expense or doubt you may have, please, better ask in advance (info@xlic.eu). E.g. fligths departure/arrivals from/to places other than where the eligible participant is working/residing, extra meals, nights, taxi expenses, etc. shall not be reimbursed if permission is not requested before the meeting.

Scope

The topic of the 2^nd meeting on the Energetic Processing of Large Molecules (EPoLM-2) is Carbon- and hydrocarbon molecules: from the lab to space. Building on the success of the first meeting at the Lorentz Center in Leiden in May 2015, we aim to bring together scientists from a broad range of research fields (physics, chemistry, astrophysics, and astronomy) to exchange expertise and work together on joint projects. Here, the focus will be on the latest laboratory results on mechanisms and rates for the formation and destruction of carbon and hydrocarbon molecules under space-like conditions. The aim of the meeting is to combine this knowledge with new observations and astrophysical models.

The 2^nd meeting for the members of the XLIC Working Group 2 is organized in the framework of the COST Action CM1204 (XUV/X-ray light and fast ions for ultrafast chemistry). Working Group 2 is concerned with the stability of highly excited and highly charged molecules in the gas phase and their reactivity: interaction with other molecules and formation of new species through isomerization and/or fragmentation.

 Conference site

The meetings will be held during 11-13 and 13-15 April 2016 in Stockholm (Sweden), with one common day (April 13). The conference venue is the AlbaNova University Center, which is located close to the city center and is easily accessed by public transport.

Deadlines     

Registration: 29 February 2016
Abstract submission: 29 February 2016
Note that the registration may be closed earlier due to the capacity of the venue

Support

Speakers invited to attend the second XLIC WG2 meeting (and some selected participants) can be reimbursed for their travel and subsistence expenses in accordance to COST rules. Please, note that no support to attend the EPoLM-2 meeting will be provided by XLIC Action.

Before incurring on any expense, please check COST Vademecum pages 20-24. In particular, please,
– check the supporting documents you should provide in case you are travelling to and from countries other than that where the approved meeting is being held and the country where you are residing. A proper justification and all the documents detailed in page 22 of COST Vademecum should be provided when sending the claim. If not, the claim will be rejected.
– take note on the current definition on Local transport expenses on page 24 of COST Vademecum: now, you should provide tickets/invoices for any trip occurring within the same country if the claim exceed 25 EUR.

Participants are kindly asked to keep their expenses as low as possible and ask only for the amounts they have spent, even if flat rates allow for a higher contribution, so the Action budget can be used to support more activities/participants. Thank you in advance!

Organizing committee

Henrik Cederquist (Stockholm University), Henning Zettergren (Stockholm University), Henning Schmidt (Stockholm University), Ronnie Hoekstra (University of Groningen), and Alexander Tielens (Leiden Observatory).

The XLIC WG1&WG2 Expert Meeting “From Ultrafast to Ultraslow Dynamics in Molecules and Clusters” will be held in the Weizmann Institute of Science Israel , from 23th to 25th January  2017.The Meeting  is jointly organized by the Local organizing committee, the team of the conference unit of the  Weizmann Institute and COST CM1204 Action (XLIC).
The workshop participation is open to everybody.

Scope and Program of the Meeting

Dynamical processes in molecular and cluster systems play an important role in different disciplines of  research including atmospheric and interstellar chemistry, biology, nano-science and more. It is appealing to classify different types of dynamics according to their time scale – from attosecond electronic dynamics, femtosecond and picosecond ro-vibrational motion up to typical nanosecond times of spontaneous radiative processes. However, even in small clusters and biomolecules, coupling of many degree’s of freedom can lead to ultra-slow dynamics extending up to millisecond times.
In recent years, experimental techniques for studying these different dynamics have considerably advanced – from the development of ultrafast light sources, including high-order harmonic generation and free electron laser X-ray facilities, as well as highly controlled ion traps and ion storage rings that allow following a slow evolving time evolution of isolated molecular and cluster ions. On the theoretical side, quantum mechanical calculations provide insight regarding short time scales, while statistical models can describe long time dynamics on the ensemble level.
These communities have developed in parallel and often with little interaction with each-other. The goal of this workshop  will be to bridge the gap between the different communities towards a full understanding of molecular and cluster dynamics. For example, it will be valuable to understand the role of initial ultrafast electronic and vibrational rearrangement of an isolated system on its slow decay by statistical fragmentation. Does ultrafast dynamics leading to internal conversion influence delayed recurrent fluorescence events? What is the importance of the coherent vibrational motion for long term processes and spectroscopic probes of isolated interstellar environments or biomolecular systems?
We aim at achieving this goal by bringing together leading experts from the different fields: including atto-second science, femto-chemistry, action spectroscopy, ion storage devices, time-dependent quantum mechanics and statistical physics – in order to promote a common language and shared goals. In particular, participants will be asked to highlight the scientific goals and challenges of each field to promote collaborative efforts. We hope that this conference will generate long term collaborations that will advance our understanding of molecular and cluster science across  the different time scales.

Immportant dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: November 1st, 2016
Registration Deadline: January 5th, 2017

Registration

Click here to register

List of invited speakers

Noam Agmon, Hebrew University, Israel
Lars H. Andersen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Itzik Ben-Itzhak, Kansas State University, USA
Valerie Blanchet, CELIA, Bordeaux, France
Anastasia Bochenkova, Moscow State University, Russia
Steen Brondsted Nielsen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Philip Bucksbaum, Stanford, USA
Francesca Calegari, Politecnico Milano, Italy
Lorenz Cederbaum, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Henrik Cederquist, Stockholm University, Sweden
Brett Esry, Kansas State University, USA
Sharly Fleischer, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Jason Greenwood, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Christiane Koch, Universität Kassel, Germany
Ronni Kosloff, Hebrew University, Israel
Holger Kreckel, MPI-K Heidelberg, Germany
Stephen Leone, UC Berkeley, USA
Nimrod Moiseyev, Technion, Israel
Edvardas Narevicius, Weizmann Institute, Israel
Daniel Neumark, UC Berkeley USA
Thomas Pfeifer, MPI-K Heidelberg, Germany
Igor Schapiro, Hebrew University, Israel
Haruo Shiromaru, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan
Jan. R. R. Verlet, Durham University, UK
Mathias Weber, JILA, Colorado, USA
Roland Wester, Universität Innsbruck , Austria