Please forward this to anyone potentially interested.

I would like to draw your attention to the SMART (Space-time Multiscale Approaches for Research and Technology) Winter School, to be held in Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy, from the 25th to the 29th of January, 2016.

The school will provide an overview of computational methodologies encompassing several space- and time-scales, from small isolated molecules toward large and complex systems, and from intrinsically quantum dynamical processes toward slow motion regimes, which are further integrated within multiscale models. 

The main topics are localized phenomena occurring in non-periodic systems where use of focussed models is suggested by the presence of natural time and space scale separations among different processes.

Integrated schemes composed by quantum mechanical building blocks treated by localized basis sets coupled to molecular mechanical description of more distant regions and fully polarisable continuum description of bulk environmental effects will be discussed.

Description of complex phenomena requires also integration among several interlocking timescales, starting from ultrafast electronic processes, all the way to slow motions underlying magnetic resonance spectra line-shapes.

Time-independent and time-dependent quantum descriptions of nuclear motion effects on molecular properties and spectra can be coupled to semi-classical or classical descriptions of slower motions and coarse-grained methodological schemes (molecular, mesoscopic and macroscopic) aimed at the description of very slow molecular motions through stochastic processes.

All these issues will be illustrated by case studies involving ground and excited electronic states of molecular systems embedded in soft and hard environments.

For more information, you are invited to consult the site http://smart.sns.it