The tutorial will cover the fundamentals and the practical use of state-of-the-art codes for the calculation of the electronic structure of bulk solids, surfaces, and defects and impurities in solids. This includes applications in thermodynamical properties, phase transitions, temperature and pressure effects, magnetic and spectroscopic properties, and surface properties including reactivity of and at surfaces. The influence of structural vacancies both in bulk and at surfaces will be addressed as an important topic influencing in a significant way the properties of different materials. The chemical reactivity of surfaces will be the subject of one of the lectures of the course, with a full discussion of different aspects of the modelling of the CO oxidation in a Y-doped TiO2 supported gold nanoparticles catalyst. That is, in summary, the content of the main theoretical and practical sessions, grouped into 8 and 4 subjects, respectively.

(Theo-1) Symmetry (Pablo García Fernández)
Summary of basic concepts. Space groups. Tensor quantities. Crystal strain. Bloch theorem. The symmetry of the wavefunction under periodic boundary conditions.

(Theo-2) Electronic structure. (Cristina Díaz)
Cluster and periodic models. Atomistic models. Kohn-Sham equations and DFT methodologies. Electronic structure calculations. Phonons and crystal searching.

(Theo-3) Thermodynamic properties. (Cristina Díaz)
Static models. Equation of state of solids. Phase transitions. Mechanisms and kinetics of phase transitions. Thermal effects.

(Theo-4) Chemical bonding and microscopic approach. (Julia Contreras)
Topologies of scalar fields in crystals. Electron density, electron localization function and reduced density gradient chemical functions. Chemical origin of compresibility. Chemical bonding reconstruction along a phase transition.

(Theo-5) Ab initio simulation of the structure, thermodynamic properties and reactivity in surfaces. (Antonio Márquez)
Computational models in Surface Science. Structure of surfaces: Tasker’s classification of ionic surfaces. Relaxation, rumpling, and reconstruction of surfaces. Surface energies. Surface defects: O vacancies in metal oxides. Adsorption at surfaces. Case studies: organic molecules and transition metal atoms at oxide surfaces. Reactivity at surfaces: organic molecules at simple surfaces. Role of point defects. Case study: CO oxidation on an oxide supported metal catalyst. Case study: highly correlated metal oxides: the case of ceria.

(Theo-6) Ab initio simulation of magnetic and optical properties, and structural instabilities of solids. (Miguel Moreno)
Introduction: Role of impurities in crystalline solids. Impurities in insulators. Localization. What are the calculations useful for? Substitutional Transition Metal Impurities in insulators: Description of states. Study of Model Systems: interatomic distances and colour. The colour of gemstones containing Cr3+. Static Jahn-Teller effect: description. Static Jahn-Teller effect: experimental evidence. Insight into the Jahn-Teller effect. Off centre motion of impurities: evidence and characteristics. Origin of the off centre distortion. Softening around impurities.

(Theo-7) Magnetic interactions in Molecules and Solids: Basic concepts and Spin Hamiltonians (Coen de Graaf)
Spin Hamiltonians. Effective Hamiltonian theory. Magnetism in condensed matter. Spin waves for ferromagnets. Antiferromagnetic lattices. Electron transport. Quantum Chemical approach to solid state magnetism. Four center interactions in cuprates.

(Theo-8) Magnetic anisotropy, Double exchange and spin wave theory (Coen de Graaf)

Registration: http://www.cecam.org/workshop-6-1308.html

Registration for the Ultrafast X-Ray Summer School 2016 is now open. UXSS 2016 will take place during June 12-16 at the PULSE institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. UXSS 2016 is organized in collaboration with the Center for Free Electron Laser Science (CFEL) at DESY in Hamburg, Germany. The summer school is intended to give a comprehensive introduction to the field of ultrafast x-ray science and free electron lasers. The program, directed towards graduate students and post-docs, is highly interdisciplinary and focuses on the latest developments and opportunities in the field. A limited amount of travel support is available. Students interested to apply are requested to send a brief one-page statement describing their background and research interests. For more information visit:

https://ultrafast.stanford.edu/uxss-2016

2^nd MOLIM Training School: Advanced technics for molecular spectroscopy and dynamics

The 2^nd MOLIM Training School focuses on the recent experimental developments occurred in the field of molecular spectroscopy and reaction dynamics. World-wide experts working in European country will be invited to present the most relevant state-of-the-art techniques and their applications. The trainees will benefit from visits of the brand new laser servers ATTOLAB and CILEX as well as of the synchrotron SOLEIL. By team of 2 to 3 trainees, the students will be involved in a laboratory project hosted in several laboratories of the Paris-Saclay University.

The registration is open to Master students, Ph.D students, post-docs and permanent scientist from all European countries. Affiliation to the COST MOLIM is not required to participate to this school. The school can welcome up to 40 Europeans trainees and 10 more students from Paris region.

The registration deadline is fixed at Feb 24th 2017. Booking of rooms by the Committee will be possible up to Jan. 31st 2017.

Registration: http://iramis.cea.fr/meetings/MTS2/index.php

Confirmed speakers:

Knuth Asmis (Leipzig, D)
Valérie Blanchet (Bordeaux, FR)
Juraj Fedor (Prague, CZ)
Gustavo Garcia (Paris-Saclay, France)
Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus (Bielefeld, D)
Anne Lafosse (ISMO, F)
Franck Lépine (Lyon, FR)
Andrew Orr-Ewing (Bristol, UK)
Katharine Reid (Nothingham, UK)
Claire Vallance (Oxford, UK)
Katalin Varjú (Szeged, HU)
Roland Wester (Innsbruck, AU)

Organizing Comittee :

Dr. Lionel Poisson
Pr. Majdi Hochlaf
Dr. Laurent Nahon
Pr. Satchin Soorkia

The 4th  XLIC General Meeting (COST Action CM1204) will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on March 14-16, 2017. It will also host the final XLIC Management Committee (March 14) and the 3rd Young Scientist Forum (YSF).

ABSTRACTS:
Deadline for the submission of abstracts is January 31st, 2017. Abstracts should be written in English and uploaded via the online form.

REGISTRATION:
Interested participants must register before February 14th, 2017, by filling the corresponding form.  All meeting participants must pay a conference package (including lunch, dinner and coffee) for the days attending the meeting. To proceed with the payment, please, fill, sign and send to reservation@hotelpyramida.cz the following form.

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM
The conference will consist of lectures given by invited speakers, Young Scientist Forum and 2 poster sessions.
NEW: The draft full scientific program, including timetable, talks and list of poster contributions can be downloaded here: XLIC_GM_2017-ScientificProgram (the most updated version should be checked in the meeting website: http://www.jh-inst.cas.cz/xlic2017/programme).

3rd YOUNG SCIENTISTS FORUM:
There shall be a special half-day session with talks given by young researchers (PhD students and post-docs) on March 15. It will include 12 lectures, out of which 6 oral contributions will be chosen by YSF committee based on submitted abstracts. The deadline for abstract submission for YSF was 31^st January 2017.
Applicants asking for the talk at YSF are also required to submit a short CV which is to be emailed to xlic2017@jh-inst.cas.cz. Abstracts submitted after the deadline will not be considered for the selection.
For more details see http://www.jh-inst.cas.cz/xlic2017/home and  http://www.xlic.eu. You can also contact A. Domaracka (domaracka@ganil.fr).
Selected YSF speakers can ask for financial support from XLIC COST Action.
NEW: The list of young researchers selected to give a talk has been published here: https://xlic.qui.uam.es/?p=3369

ACCOMMODATION:
Due to all-under-one-roof format of the conference, accommodation is also available: both single and double rooms for the price of 65 EUR/night. To book your room, please, fill, sign and send to reservation@hotelpyramida.cz the following form before February 14th, 2017.
More information can be found in the meeting website: http://www.jh-inst.cas.cz/xlic2017/accommodation

FINANCIAL SUPPORT:
The participation of  XLIC MC members and speakers will be supported with Action budget (with the exception of MC Observers coming from IPC Institutions). COST will also fully reimburse those young researchers selected for oral contributions in the Young Scientist Forum and, depending on the budget, we will try to cover also expenses from other young participants.
Participants entitled for reimbursement will receive an official notification before the meeting. We strongly recommend to check the COST rules for reimbursement before incurring any expense in:

• COST Vademecum, page 20-24, and /or
• the instructions on how to fill the Travel Reimbursement Request Form (TRR)

Accommodation and meal expenses will be reimbursed on the basis of flat rates. A reduction on maximum flat rates allowed for this particular meeting has been agreed by XLIC MC. The applicable rates are 100 EUR for accommodation and 20 EUR for meal expenses. For participants staying in cheaper hotels less money can be claimed  by requesting the reimbursement for a smaller number of nights/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.
Please note that claims submitted later than 30 days after the meeting shall not be considered.

The International school on “The Frontiers of Attosecond and Ultrafast X-ray Science” will be held from 19th to 28th March 2017 in Erice, Sicily, Italy.

The primary objective of this new school is to educate the next generation of scientists who will impact the future of attosecond and ultrafast x-ray science. We anticipate that the school will meet on a regular basis every two years and become a foundation for the ultrafast community. Consequently, the main topics of the course are the following: (i) attosecond science and technology, devoted to the generation and application of attosecond pulses to the investigation of electronic dynamics in atoms, molecules, nanostructures and condensed phases; (ii) fundamentals, methods and applications of free electron lasers, synchrotron radiation, ion collisions in atomic and molecular science. Lectures will cover current developments in theory and experiments but are also intended to give the basics of the field.

Please note that, PhD students and post-docs willing to attend the school can apply for scholarships (deadline 30 January 2017). For more details see: http://www.erice-attosecond.it/registration

The school co-organised by XLIC COST Action and sponsored by Politecnico di Milano, Italian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research, Sicilian Regional Parliament, ELI-ALPS and Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture.

The organizers,

Louis Di Mauro, Alicja Domaracka, Mauro Nisoli and  Sergio Martellucci

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.

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

The scientific workshop: “Massive Computation for Ultrafast Molecular Breaking” (MACUMB 2017) will be held in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) on 25th and 26th of May 2017.

The scientific program (http://www.macumb.info/programme.html) includes ten invited talks that will be combined with two 3-hours practical sessions in computer rooms. We aim to bring together developers of the state-of-the-art scientific software in the field of quantum chemistry and molecular physics.

Registration is already open and closes on May 15^th, 2017. The registration for the meeting is free for all participants.

You can find detailed information at http://www.macumb.info/

Organizers:
Alicia Palacios, Sergio Díaz-Tendero and Jesús González-Vázquez
Departamento de Química, Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The CECAM workshop Seeking synergy between dynamics and statistics for non-equilibrium quantum processes will be held in Paris in June 6th-9th.

One of the major difficulties in achieving an accurate theoretical descriptions of non-equilibrium processes in quantum mechanical systems is framed by the desire to provide a representation of the system of interest that is as realistic as possible, in a manner that is computationally tractable. The coupling of electronic and nuclear motion involving excited states, the quantum nature of the nuclear degrees of freedom, and the application of time-dependent driving forces, are just few examples of the effects that must be addressed in order to simulate these processes. Each of these effects poses unique challenges to theoretical progress. A number of exact and approximate quantum dynamics techniques are being developed and refined in order to provide algorithms that respond to the demand for a balance between computational efficiency and physical accuracy. Currently available techniques are typically based upon two different, but equivalent, formulations of many-body quantum mechanics, the wave function approach or the density matrix picture.

The proposed workshop aims to bring together the two principal molecular quantum dynamics communities (wave-function methods and density matrix approaches). The scope is threefold, (i) to identify and explore common goals and obstacles, (ii) help in fostering new ideas to connect these approaches, and bridge the apparent gap between approximate dynamical and statistical descriptions, (iii) identify possible routes to extend dynamics approaches to the domain of statistics.

At the workshop, experts are asked to uncover the fundamental details of the methods in pedagogical lectures. These lectures will be followed by extensive discussions, during which contributed speakers and participants are welcome to put forth some of their doubts and problems in the relation between dynamics and statistics.

Further information can be at:          https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1483.html

Preliminary invited speakers are:

Nandini Ananth (Cornell University, USA) Sara Bonella (CECAM, Switzerland) Irene Burghardt (Goethe University, Germany) Eitan Geva (University of Michigan, USA) E. K. U. Gross (Max-Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Germany) Raymond Kapral (University of Toronto, Canada) Dvira Segal (University of Toronto, Canada) Jeremy Richardson (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Graham Worth (University College London, UK)

Where: CECAM Headquarters, Lausanne, Switzerland
When: June 12-16, 2017
https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1326.html
Application deadline: February 28, 2017

This is a singular opportunity for students and postdocs. The school will be very similar to the previous one at IPAM last year (http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/summer-schools/putting-the-theory-back-in-density-functional-theory/) with a similar line-up of excellent lecturers. We also provide limited support for student accommodation.

Scientific overview:

Last year, at least 30,000 scientific papers reported the results of DFT calculations. Many workshops and schools teach how to run a specific code. The purpose of this school is to teach the theory behind DFT. Lectures will be pedagogical and range from fundamentals to the latest approximations. The school is primarily targeted at junior researchers (Ph.D. students and postdocs) who are currently running DFT calculations and/or developing DFT or are interested in learning more about DFT. Internationally renowned experts in DFT will provide a thorough training in the fundamental theory through lectures and pedagogical research talks that connect themes of the lectures to the lecturers’ own cutting-edge research.

Confirmed speakers:

Mel Levy (Tulane University), John Perdew (Temple University), Hardy Gross (Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics) Weitao Yang (Duke University) Kieron Burke (University of California, Irvine) Leeor Kronik (Weizmann Institute) Neepa Maitra (Hunter College, CUNY) Adrienn Ruzsinszky (Temple University) Adam Wasserman (Purdue University)

Application:

Fill out the application form on the school web site. Submit one letter of recommendation from your academic advisor (via email to acangi@mpi-halle.mpg.de). Participants are strongly encouraged to present a poster. Applications arriving by February 28, 2017 will receive full consideration.

Organizing Committee:

Attila Cangi (Sandia National Laboratories) Kieron Burke (University of California, Irvine) Hardy Gross (Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics)

The next Joint Iberian Meeting on Atomic and Molecular Physics IBER 2017 will take place in Barcelona, Spain from September 12 to 14, 2017.

IBER is the biannual conference organised jointly by the Atomic and Molecular Physics Specialised Group (GEFAM) of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and the Portuguese Society of Physics.

The main purpose of this series of IBER conferences is to bring together scientists of Iberian community dedicated to Atomic and Molecular Physics and related areas of to facilitate the interaction and exchange of knowledge between their research groups. Researchers and scientists from all over Europe and the world are invited to attend this conference and share knowledge. The conference will be structured in three days with plenary lectures, invited lectures, oral presentations and a poster session.

For detailed information and registration please visit:

http://iber2017.com

Specific topics of IBER include:

• Quantum Physics and Chemistry
• Experimental Techniques and Applied Physics
• Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy and Structure
• Biomolecules and Biophysics
• Clusters, Nanoparticles
• Surfaces and Condensed Phases
• Dynamical Studies of Elementary Processes
• Femtochemistry and Laser Control

List of Confirmed Speakers

M. Alcamí, U. Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
V. Aquilanti, U. de Perugia (Italy)
A. Bergeat, U. de Bordeaux (France)
F. Calegari, U. of Hamburg (Germany)
M.L. Carvalho, U. Nova Lisboa (Portugal)
D. Clary, Oxford University (UK)
B. Costa Cabral, U. Lisboa (Portugal)
L.M. Frutos, U. de Alcalá de Henares (Spain)
P. García Jambrina, U. Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
P. Jönsson, Malmö högskola, Malmö (Sweden)
U. Manthe. Universität Bielfeld (Germany)
T. Martinez, Stanford University (USA)
B. Maté, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spain)
E. Narevicius, Weizmann Institute (Israel)
J. A. Paixão, U. de Coimbra, (Portugal)
M. J. Ramos, U. de Porto (Portugal)
O. Roncero, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spain)
D. Shalashilin, U. of Leeds (UK)
S. Willitchs, U. Basel (Switzerland)

Registration is now open. The deadline for early-bird registration is July 6th while abstract submission will be open until June 9th. Please  mark your calendars.
Approximately 10-12 contributions will be selected for oral communications. The participation of young researchers and students is particularly welcome.

We looking forward to welcoming in Barcelona!

With best regards

The Organising Committee at Universitat de Barcelona,
Antonio Aguilar Navarro (Chairman)
Margarita Albertí Wirsing
Miguel González Pérez
Fermín Huarte-Larrañaga (Secretary)
Estefanía López Marne
Josep Maria Lucas

Departament de Ciència de Materials i Química Física
Secció de Química Física
Institut de Química Teòrica i Computacional de la UB (IQTCUB)
Universitat de Barcelona