Events

Feb
26
Mon
CECAM School: Nonadiabatic Molecular Dynamics in Three Different Flavors @ CECAM HQ
Feb 26 – Mar 2 all-day
CECAM School: Nonadiabatic Molecular Dynamics in Three Different Flavors @ CECAM HQ | Lausanne | Vaud | Switzerland

The main purpose of this school is to teach the participants different methods for performing excited-state molecular dynamics.

The first day of the school will be devoted to a general introduction on nonadiabatic molecular dynamics and potential energy surfaces.
Each of the three following days will discuss a particular nonadiabatic method, from a theoretical and a practical perspective, via dedicated lectures in the morning and tutorials on the computer during the afternoon. The three techniques that will be introduced during this school are Multi Configuration Time Dependent Hartree (MCTDH), Ab Initio Multiple Spawning (AIMS), and Trajectory Surface Hopping (TSH). TSH, AIMS, and MCTDH are currently the most popular nonadiabatic dynamics strategies for molecular applications. Furthermore, these three techniques form a hierarchy, from the most accurate quantum dynamics (MCTDH), passing by the approximate yet rigorous trajectory-guided technique AIMS, down to the mixed quantum/classical algorithm TSH.
This school will offer a unique opportunity to learn these methods in parallel, allowing the participants to gain a clear understanding of their differences, but also of their complementarity.

1. General introduction to excited-state dynamics. (Day 1)
a. Time-dependent Schrödinger equation
b. Representations and Ansätze for the time-dependent molecular wavefunction
c. Born-Oppenheimer approximation and beyond
2. Concept of potential energy surfaces. (Day 1)
a. Potential energy surfaces and conical intersections
b. Potential energy fitting procedures
3. Electronic structure properties required for nonadiabatic dynamics. (Day 1)
a. Electronic structure methods for excited states
b. Forces and nonadiabatic couplings
c. On-the-fly dynamics
4. MCTDH and its Gaussian-based versions. (Day 2)
5. Full and Ab Initio Multiple Spawning. (Day 3)
6. Mixed quantum/classical methods and Trajectory Surface Hopping. (Day 4)

Apr
9
Mon
CECAM School: School on Kinetics and Dynamics of Chemical Reactions @ CECAM ES
Apr 9 – Apr 13 all-day
CECAM School: School on Kinetics and Dynamics of Chemical Reactions @ CECAM ES | Zaragoza | Aragon | Spain

Molecular reaction dynamics has become an integral part of modern chemistry and is set to become a cornerstone for much of the natural sciences. Molecular reaction dynamics is the study of elementary processes and the means of probing them, understanding them, and controlling them. It can be applied to reactions in solution and to reactions on surfaces, exploring the elementary steps in catalysis. Nowadays chemistry requires a molecular level understanding of the reactivity. Moreover, chemical kinetics in an old discipline (born in 1850) that deals with the rates of chemical reaction and how these rates depend on factors such as concentration and temperature. Although it in principle presents a macroscopic point of view, this can be directly related with the molecular point of view. Thus, kinetic or dynamic Monte Carlo simulations allow us to bridge the gap of many orders of magnitude in length and time scales between the processes on the molecular scale and the macroscopic kinetics.
The present school is open to European master and PhD students and postdocs with interest to understand chemical reactions at molecular level and to apply the theoretical and computational chemistry to this matter. First-year students of the Erasmus+ Master European in Theoretical Chemistry and Molecular Modelling will attend to this school as a part of their mandatory subjects although second-year students of this Master but from the rest of Europe it is expected that can attend too. Last year (2017) we made by first time this school and it was very successful.

The school will cover the principal aspects of the kinetics and dynamics of chemical reactions, centred mainly in the theoretical and computational approaches, although some experimental techniques will also be explained.

Registration deadline: March 9, 2018

More Information at https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1529.html

May
7
Mon
CECAM School: Theoretical Solid State Chemistry: theory, modelling, and simulation @ CECAM HQ
May 7 – May 11 all-day
CECAM School: Theoretical Solid State Chemistry: theory, modelling, and simulation @ CECAM HQ | Lausanne | Vaud | Switzerland

Although computer simulation of the electronic structure and properties of solids began decades ago, only recently the solid state methodologies have become sufficiently reliable that their application has resulted in an increasingly important impact on solid state chemistry and physics. , While a large number of course and tutorials already exists, they are mainly focused on audiences with strong background on solid state physics, and usually devoted to some particular electronic structure code. Far more unusual are the courses designed to teach the solid-state techniques to chemists, thus contributing to eliminate the cultural barriers that still exist between both groups. This school is primarily targeted to PhD students and post docs who are interested or are starting to learning about the application theory methods and techniques to the study of the physics and chemistry of the solid state.

The level of this tutorial corresponds to master or doctorate students in areas of physics and chemistry. After two initial days where the fundamentals of theory of the treatment of the electronic structure of solids will be presented to the students, the remaining of the tutorial will be devoted to the examination of specific and hot areas like characterization of chemical bonding in solids and relationship to macroscopic properties, structure and reactivity at solid surfaces, including layered systems and highly correlated oxides, and magnetic properties. The afternoons will be dedicated to practical hand-on tutorials. Several computational codes are actively being developed, capable of simulating molecules, pure and defective crystals, surface and transport properties, and reactive processes in the bulk and interfaces. Getting familiar with the different codes and their possibilities requires an adequate training that merges theory and practice in substantial amounts.

More info at: https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1553.html

May
14
Mon
CECAM School: Quantum and Mixed Quantum Classical Dynamics in photochemistry @ CECAM ES
May 14 – May 18 all-day
CECAM School: Quantum and Mixed Quantum Classical Dynamics in photochemistry @ CECAM ES | Zaragoza | Aragon | Spain

Photoinitiated processes are not only important for understanding natural phenomena but they also play an undeniable role in the booming fields of renewable energy, material design and medicine. Excited state processes have traditionally been explained from a static point of view, delivering in some cases a biased, incorrect or even incomplete description of the former. The simulation of the dynamics of such processes is therefore fundamental for the quest to understand the chemical and physical mechanisms.
The purpose of this school is to introduce its participants to state-of-the-art methodologies for the simulation of the dynamics of processes in the excited state, following the evolution in time of photoinitiated reactions, one of the priority topics of this call.

The school will be focused in simulating the dynamics of complex molecules. Electronic ab initio or TD-DFT methods would be sketched for obtaining the electronic wavefunctions or densities, that would be afterwards quantum-mechanically propagated. Moreover, several approaches for the treatment of the nuclei will be also provided, from full quantum dynamics to mixed quantum-classical dynamics.

The course is directed at PhD students, and young researchers, beginners in the field, working in theoretical chemistry and molecular physics.

The tutorial will be organized in 6 theoretical and 6 practical sessions, the latter taking place in the computer lab. The theoretical sessions will be of 3 hours and practical sessions will last 3 hours. The school will comprise 3 didactic blocks.
The first block will have an introductory character and will offer an overview of the field. The following block will focus on mono- and multi-configurational electronic structure methods for the description of excited states. The last block will cover dynamics methodologies. See description below. The school will end with a comprehensive overview (2 hours) of state-of-the-art applications, limitations, suitabilities, future perspectives and challenges of the different static and dynamical approaches described in the school.

More information: https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1542.html

May
21
Mon
CECAM School: New Computational Methods for Attosecond Molecular Processes @ CECAM-ES
May 21 – May 25 all-day
CECAM School: New Computational Methods for Attosecond Molecular Processes @ CECAM-ES | Zaragoza | Aragon | Spain

The recent development of novel light sources like x-ray free-electron lasers and table-top lasers for high-harmonic generation, which are capable of delivering controllable sequences of intense sub-femtosecond ionizing pulses, has opened the way to monitor and control electron dynamics in atoms and molecules at its natural time scale, the attosecond (Chem. Rev. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00453). The description of the coherent superposition of electronic continuum states that the interaction of such pulses with molecules generates goes beyond the capabilities of standard quantum-chemistry packages, which have been designed to describe the lowest bound states. Furthermore, stationary state-based pictures based on lowest-order perturbation theory are, in most cases, inapplicable. The purpose of this school is to introduce state-of-the-art ab-initio, hybrid and TDDFT numerical methods that can cope with ultra-fast dynamics in the electronic continuum of molecules, with an emphasis on unbound states in strong-fields and on the need to go beyond single-active-electron models to properly account for electron correlation. The course is directed to advanced master students, PhD students and young post-doctoral researchers in atomic and molecular physics, theoretical chemistry and applied mathematics, with an interest in developing new software for coherent control of electronic dynamics in systems of chemical interest.

The tutorial will be organized in 5 theoretical sessions and 4 practical sessions in the computer lab. Both theoretical and practical sessions will be of 4 hours. The school comprises four didactic blocks. The first block has an introductory character. It offers an overview of the field and a tutorial on strong field physics. The following three blocks focus on systems of increasing complexity and will be devoted to the description and use of new computational methods for fast time evolution in correlated systems in non-perturbative conditions (see description below). The school will end with a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art results in attosecond pump-probe and strong field molecular science obtained with ab initio “exact” simulations in small systems, on the one side, and with TD-DFT effective-field simulations, capable of coping with larger systems, on the other side. The future perspectives, challenges and mutual interaction of these two complementary approaches will be discussed.

More information: https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1552.html

Jul
2
Mon
CECAM workshop: Non-adiabatic quantum dynamics: From Theory to Experiments @ CECAM HQ
Jul 2 – Jul 6 all-day

The CECAM workshop entitled ‘Non-adiabatic quantum dynamics: From Theory to Experiments’ (https://www.cecam.org/workshop-0-1638.html) will be held at CECAM HQ in Lausanne, Switzerland from 2nd-6th July 2018.

This workshop aims to consolidate the rapid development in the field of molecular quantum dynamics and increase the synergy between experimentalists and theoreticians in this area. The program features a number of invited presentations from leading theoreticians and experimentalists and will be supplemented by a number of talks selected from submitted abstracts.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to Lausanne.

Tom Penfold on behalf of all of the co-organisers.

Jul
16
Mon
Symposium in Honour of Otilia Mó and Manuel Yáñez @ Campus Tecnológico Fábrica de Armas
Jul 16 all-day
Jul
17
Tue
ESPA2018 @ Campus Tecnológico Fábrica de Armas
Jul 17 – Jul 19 all-day

The ESPA 2018 (11th Congress on Electronic Structure Principles and Applications) will be held in Toledo, Spain on 17-19 July 2018

ESPA is a series of international conferences covering all aspects of Theoretical Chemistry from methods development to application to different fields.

The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad de Castilla la Mancha and APQTC (Asociación para la Promoción de la Química Teórica y Computacional), the organizers of this conference are delighted and honored to host this ESPA conference in the historic city of Toledo, World Heritage Site, during the summer of 2018.

Registration will open in January 15, 2018.

More information here: http://www.espa2018.com

Jul
18
Wed
16-ICQC @ Palais de l’Europe
Jul 18 – Jul 23 all-day

The International Congress of Quantum Chemistry (ICQC) has been held every three years under the auspices of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (IAQMS) since 1973. The 2015 congress was organized in Beijing, China, and the 2012 edition in Boulder, Colorado, USA. It brings together the international community of theoretical chemists in the form of a one-week conference aimed at presenting the state of the art and latest advances in terms of developments and applications in the field of theoretical and computational chemistry.

The 16th ICQC will be held in ‘le Palais de l’Europe’ in the town of Menton, France, from Monday June 18th afternoon to Saturday June 23rd early afternoon, 2018. A single-session format will allow the audience to follow the entire program. Every talk will be invited and all other contributions will be presented as posters.

More information here: https://icqc16.sciencesconf.org/

Sep
3
Mon
ESCB2, Oviedo-ES
Sep 3 – Sep 7 all-day

After the success of the first edition of the European Symposium on Chemical Bonding, that took place in Rouen in 2016, it is our pleasure to inform you that the second edition of this series will be held in Oviedo, Spain, from September 3 to September 7, 2018.

Following the spirit of the ESCB1, the conference will be devoted to showing new developments as well as relevant applications in the field of chemical bonding. Besides a set of invited lectures by leaders in the field, we expect to gather a number of younger researchers, for whom we plan to offer shorter oral communications.

In keeping with the tradition of ESCB1, a practical school on methods, applications and computational tecniques, this time focused on quantum chemical topology tools in chemical bonding will take place before the beginning of the meeting, from September 2 to September 4. We expect younger students interested in the school to also join us in the conference.

Ángel, Julia, and Eduard
Chairs of the ESCB2
More info: http://www.escb2oviedo.com/en/