Latest update: 23 September 2026

Metsätalo building, City Center Campus, University of Helsinki

Address: Unioninkatu 40

Preliminary: The lectures will be held in the Metsätalo building (House of Forestry). The nearest metro station is Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki).

The organising committee consists of

• Maria Dimitrova
• Theo Kurtén
• Susi Lehtola
• Nanna Myllys
• Dage Sundholm
• Stefan Taubert

Fabrizio Creazzo, University of Zürich

• Lecture 1: First-Principles Modelling of Solid–Liquid Interfaces: From Electronic Structure to Interfacial Dynamics
• Lecture 2: Modelling Complex Chemical Reactions at Solid–Liquid Interfaces: DFT-Enhanced Sampling and Machine Learning

Benjamin Frandsen, University of Oslo

• Lecture 1: The importance of the (often ignored) electronic partition function in reaction kinetics
• Lecture 2: Basic insights into how electronic spin affect reaction dynamics

Jan Halborg Jensen, University of Copenhagen

• Lecture 1: Finding transition states
• Lecture 2: The kinetics and thermodynamics of reactions
• Lecture 3: Reaction networks

Hannes Jónsson, University of Iceland

• Lecture 1: Transition states
• Lecture 2: Quantum systems where tunneling takes place
• Lecture 3: Magnetic systems

Laura Orian, Università degli Studi di Padova

• Lecture 1: From molecules to mechanisms: modeling chemical reactivity
• Lecture 2: The ´why´ behind reactivity: activation-strain analysis and MO theory
• Lecture 3: Beyond the energy landscape: predicting catalytic kinetics

Contributed Talks

In addition to the lectures, two 25-minute contributed talks will be given at the winter school, followed by five minutes of discussion, each. The information is updated when the talks are selected.

• Name, Title
• Name, Title

The Registration is open. Registration will close when the School is full (maximum of 95 participants), or on November 30th at 23:59, the latest. Please indicate in the registration form if you want to present a poster at the winter school, and/or if you wish to be considered for a contributed talk.

Please register using the online form.

The School is free of charge for academic staff at any level: students, postdocs, as well professors are all welcome to attend the school. You will have to arrange for you housing yourself. Lunches and coffees can be bought in the Unicafe Cafeteria.

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.

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.

Students who wish to have credits for the course, should write an essay on one of the School topics, and return it before 15 Feb 2027. You find a list of essay topics in the same folder as the Lecture Notes (above), as well as below.

The length of the essay is about 3 A4 pages when pictures are not counted. The essays will be returned using this form: Link. It is not allowed to use AI-tools to produce the text.

The course is valued at 3 ECTS.

The essay topics are (to be updated after the School):

1. The origin of weak intermolecular interaction
2. Title of your own choice (it should be related to the theme of the Winter School)

• List of Hotels in Helsinki

• 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 32,00 €. 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. You can also use Uber or Bolt for Taxi transport. Some Finnish taxi companies also have their own apps.
• Look at the latest weather reports before travelling as temperatures might drop below the freezing point for the Winter School week. At this time of year snow, rain, and a few degrees above or below zero Centigrades are common conditions.

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