With recent advances in computational techniques, many graduate students in theoretical chemical physics receive a good numerical training. However, connecting numerical modeling with experiment and the interpretation of numerical results requires developing models and solving them using old fashioned physically motivated approximations and using analytical techniques such as complex variable methods, Green's functions, path integral, semiclassical expansions, etc. It appears that these vital skills are now de-emphasized in many graduate programs and many students are unable to use the powerful methods and concepts, which historically form the basis for many important advances in chemical physics. In many schools the graduate course-work requirements have been considerably reduced over the past decade. Students are typically encouraged to select advisors and start their research within three months of entering the graduate programs. A lack of an adequate mathematical and physics training for theorists as well as experimentalists is now a major problem. Connecting theoretical modeling with experiment and the interpretation of numerical results requires developing models and solving them using physically-motivated approximations. Some students' idea of theory are that one focuses on running programs which they or others have written, rather than on the formulation of ideas which lead to programs and to an insightful interpretation of the numerical and experimental results. Summer schools (such as NATO's) are very common in Europe. Participants are exposed to a series of mini courses and get to interact with fellow students. Such opportunities rarely exist in the United States.

This chemical physics summer school will provide a basic survey of current theoretical and experimental techniques for chemistry and physics graduate students, post doctoral fellows and advanced senior undergraduate students. The lectures will emphasize physically-motivated approximations and the connection with current experiments. Lecturers will discuss what aspects have made their work so insightful and influential and what part may be transferable to other quite different problems and so speak to a large body of students in various fields of theory. One of the major accomplishments of the series of schools organized by Lowdin in the sixties and seventies was that they created a sense of community in quantum chemistry. We would like these schools to achieve the same goal, but for chemical physics in general.

The main goals of this summer school are: to expose students to tutorials in targeted subdisciplines of chemical physics; to get students acquainted with their peers at other institutions at the early stage in their careers; to familiarize students with state of the art techniques and topics, in greater depth than possible in normal course work; and to create a common culture for physics and chemistry students. Condensed matter physics and physical chemistry have a lot in common, and are gradually emerging into a single field. Their common denominator is much stronger than with other physics and chemistry subdisciplines such as high energy physics or organic chemistry. Yet the culture, terminology and way of thinking are very different for purely historical and anachronistic reasons. Traditional funding and rigid curriculum create additional barriers for the exchange of ideas. The school could help erasing these barriers.