Latest update: 14 December 2025
Winter School in Theoretical Chemistry 2025
Electronic Structure Theory
Helsinki, Mon 15 December - Thu 18 December 2025
Location
Address: Yliopistonkatu 3
The lectures will be held in lecture hall PIII. The nearest metro station is Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki), which is next door to Porthania.
Organisers
The School is organised by
the Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, Finland.
The organising committee consists of
Lecturers
Jacques Desmarais,
University of Turin
- Lecture 1: Lattice summations for theoretical chemistry of solids
- Lecture 2: The relativistic effective core potential approximation
- Lecture 3: Spin-current density functional theory
Janus Juul Eriksen,
Technical University of Denmark
- Lecture 1: A history of full configuration interaction theory
- Lecture 2: The recent renaissance of near-exact approximations
- Lecture 3: Many-body expanded full configuration interaction
Arno Förster,
VU Amsterdam
- Lectures 1-3: Green's functions methods (mostly GW-BSE) in theory and practice
Christof Holzer,
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- Lecture 1: A closer look on the behavior of DFT beyond the ground state
- Lecture 2: Designing density functional approximations for properties
- Lecture 3: Electronic structure methods and properties: a comprehensive guide
Ida-Marie Høyvik,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Lecture 1: Local orthogonal orbital spaces: possibilities and limitations
- Lecture 2: Molecules: electronically open or closed?
- Lecture 3: An electronic structure perspective on non-covalent bonding
Stanislav Komorovsky,
Slovak Academy of Sciences
- Lecture 1: Introduction to Relativistic Effects in Quantum Chemistry
- Lecture 2: Spin-Orbit Effects, Part 1: Impact on EPR Parameter Calculations
- Lecture 3: Spin-Orbit Effects, Part 2: The Heavy Atom–Light Atom Effect in NMR and Its Correlation with Bond Length
Susi Lehtola,
University of Helsinki
- Lecture 1: Discussion on reusable libraries in quantum chemistry
Roland Lindh,
Uppsala University
- Lecture 1: Contemporary MCSCF and multi-state multi-configurational methods—state of the art
- Lecture 2: The future of multi-configurational wave function models—where do we go now?
- Lecture 3: The optimization problem in QC methods—the dawn of GPR methods
Contributed Talks
In addition to the lectures, three 25-minute contributed talks will be given at the winter school, followed by five minutes of discussion, each.
- Andy Jiang, Higher Order Pair Natural Orbital-Based Coupled-Cluster Methods
- Mateusz Witkowski, Correlation Energy Per Bond
- Maximilian Breitenbach, Development of a low-scaling multicomponent DFT algorithm
Registration
The School is free of charge for academic staff at any level: students, postdocs, as well professors are all welcome to attend the school.
The school is an in-person event, only. There will be no
possibility for remote participation.
Please note that since the school is free of charge, we are
unable to provide support for travel or accomodation costs. Please
also note that we are unable to sponsor visas or provide invitation
letters for the participants, since in the cases these are necessary,
the visa process wouldn't even finish in time for the winter
school.
Registration has closed.
Programme
|
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
| 09:00 |
Welcome and plan of the day |
Plan of the day and discussion |
Plan of the day and discussion |
History of the Winter School |
| 09:15 |
Eriksen 1 |
Komorovsky 2 |
Desmarais 2 |
Lindh 3 |
| 10:00 |
Eriksen 2 |
Komorovsky 3 |
Desmarais 3 |
Förster 3 |
| 10:45 |
Break |
Break |
Break |
Break |
| 11:00 |
Holzer 1 |
Desmarais 1 |
Eriksen 3 |
Holzer 3 |
| 11:45 |
Lunch |
Lunch |
Contributed 2&3 |
Lehtola 1 |
| 13:00 |
Holzer 2 |
Høyvik 2 |
Free after 12:45 |
Departure 13:00 |
| 13:45 |
Lindh 1 |
Høyvik 3 |
|
|
| 14:30 |
Break |
Break |
|
|
| 14:45 |
Lindh 2 |
Förster 1 |
|
|
| 15:30 |
Komorovsky 1 |
Förster 2 |
|
|
| 16:15 |
Høyvik 1 |
Contributed 1 |
|
|
| 17:00 |
Posters |
(Posters) |
|
|
Posters
Please prepare your poster in (at most) A0 size in portrait orientation, i.e., width 841 x height 1189 mm. The poster boards are designed for this orientation, and posters wider than this will not fit.
The main poster session will take place on Monday afternoon (5 pm to 7 pm). The posters can be up in the lobby of the Porthania building (Yliopistonkatu 3) until Wednesday afternoon.
In the program, there is another poster session on Tuesday afternoon, which has no official arrangements, but you have time to freely discuss at the posters if you want.
Credits
Students who wish to have credits for the course, should write an essay on
one of the School topics, and return it before 1 Feb 2026.
Send a PDF of your essay to
winterschool@chem.helsinki.fi.
The length of the essay is about 3 A4 pages when pictures are not counted.
The course is valued at 3 ECTS.
Essay topics will be published later
Accommodation
Participants should make their own accommodation arrangements.
Questions
General questions concerning the School can be addressed
to
ws2025-org@chem.helsinki.fi or members of the organising
committee.
Practical notes
Some things to consider.
- Arriving at the airport, you can take the
public bus 600 or
the
train connection between the airport and the central railway
station with ringrail trains I and P. You need
an ABC zone ticket, which you can buy from a vending
machine, an R-kioski -shop or with the HSL mobile phone app. You
might consider buying a four-day ticket (see tip below).
- Information about tickets for public transport (HSL):
Link to HSL
pages . To move around in the city center area, you will need
to buy a AB ticket. However, for the airport you need a ticket for
zones ABC. A four-day ticket for the ABC zone will cost 30,00
€. You can also buy tickets with the mobile phone app "HSL".
- The HSL
app,
The Journey Planner for public transport, and
Google Maps might be
helpful. Wikipedia knows
about
public transport in Helsinki as well.
-
A taxi from the airport to the city centre should be around 40–50 €.
Note: Taxi prices are unregulated,
so a ride can in principle cost anything. Best to ask
the driver beforehand. This applies to all taxi rides, not only
from/to the airport. Note that Uber is legal in Finland, and
we recommend using it to avoid any unpleasant surprises. Bolt is
also a recommended alternative. Some Finnish taxi companies
also have their own apps, but they are not as easy to use as
Uber or Bolt.
- Look at the
latest weather reports before travelling as temperatures
might drop below the freezing point for the Winter School week.
Eat and drink
Lunch is available in
various student canteens and restaurants around campus.
For the evenings, we have collected a list of places suitable for
slightly larger groups. The ones in italics are also good
for just a drink or three. See also the map of restaurants.
The organizers recommend
- Cella - a traditional restaurant in the Kallio district
- Elite - a traditional culture and artist restaurant
- CoolHead - a craft brewery on the Viikki campus that also serves pizza; especially famous for their sour beers
- Fat Lizard - a craft brewery restaurant in downtown Helsinki
- Manala - the place for late night eats
- St Urho's Pub - a pub close to the parliament building that also serves food from Manala's kitchen
- Juttutupa - one of the oldest restaurants in Helsinki
- Kaisla - a bar in downtown Helsinki with one of the best beer selections
- Konstan Möljä - traditional Finnish buffet
Other things of interest
Helsinki might be cold, but is not dead in November and December.
Check out the #myhelsinki pages.