The present proposal is tightly bound to some common issues pertaining
to the description of finite metallic systems in presence of
chemically inert or reactive environments, for which research has been
mostly divided so far into sub-communities interested by specific
aspects of applications relevant to optics, magnetism, catalysis, or
self-assembly. Some questions this proposal aims to tackle are
methodological but general and include

-How to describe the environment itself, from implicit to explicit
models?
-Accounting for temperature, density or pressure? Importance of dynamics?
-How to describe the interaction between the metal nanoparticle and
its environment? Importance of long-range forces and ways to include
them?
-How to describe the interaction between nanoparticles?
-Price to pay to reach chemical accuracy?

Other issues are still methodological but pertain to more specific
areas of application:

-Specific problems in electronic structure: optical excitations,
correlation effects and magnetism
-Building force fields for large-scale applications, including
reactive approaches
-Coarse-graining for modeling self-assembly of nanoparticles

Finally, one main motivation of this workshop is to bring together
physicists and chemists from different backgrounds in order to promote
and exchange ideas among those cultures. Rather than focusing on few
selected methodologies or chemically similar situations, we have
chosen to blend sometimes unrelated approaches and systems into a
common meeting ground where strategies can be critically discussed
through different examples. A large portion of the workshop will thus
be system-oriented and discuss the role of the environment on the
following properties of metal-based nanoparticles:

-structure, growth and stability
-reactivity and catalysis
-optics and plasmonics; magnetism
-applications in nanomedicine: biosensing, imaging, drug delivery

The workshop itself will be organized by devoting one time slot per
half-day session to either experimental overviews or advanced methods
for treating such chemically complex systems. These overviews will
cover

-functionalization and growth of metal nanoparticles
-biomedical applications of metal nanoparticles
-challenges in DFT; treatment of long-range forces
-Approximate electronic structure methods
-coarse-graining and self-assembly

The sessions will also include roundtables (one per session) to discuss
the above issues less formally.