Who is this school for?

The school combines teaching at an advanced level on spectroscopic methods of relevance to molecular transition metal complexes, with instruction on how to employ ORCA as the quantum chemical software to compute relevant spectroscopic parameters from first principles. The candidates must be interested in both aspects and in their combination. This point should come across clearly from the motivation letter (see below). 

Candidates who are primarily interested only in spectroscopy or only in quantum chemistry will be better served by other workshops that focus on each one of these aspects separately. Note that the school deals exclusively with molecular chemistry. Materials science and heterogeneous systems are not addressed.

What are the requirements for participation?

The students should already be familiar with the fundamentals of transition metal and coordination chemistry, spectroscopy, and quantum chemistry at an advanced undergraduate level. Familiarity with the basic working practices of computational chemistry is required.

Students have to bring their own laptops. ORCA should be preinstalled and the students must have already confirmed that ORCA is working successfully on their laptops by performing test calculations such as those described in the ORCA manual.

What should be included in the motivation letter?

The motivation letter should clearly state the academic level/stage of the student, the nature of their current project, and their research interests. Delineate how you expect to benefit in practice from the school and from the specific combination of spectroscopy and quantum chemistry. The background knowledge and experience in the topics listed in the requirements above should be clearly described.