Workshop on Theoretical Chemistry 2026

February 24 to 27, 2026 in Bad Hofgastein, Austria 

Topic: Direct Excited State Dynamics

Scientific Organizers: Leticia González (University of Vienna) & Sebastian Mai (University of Vienna)

General Organizer: Johannes Hoja (University of Graz),  johannes.hoja@uni-graz.at

Speakers and Titles:

Federica Agostini (Université Paris-Saclay)

Nonadiabatic dynamics with the exact factorization approach


Basile Curchod (University of Bristol)

Trajectory-guided nonadiabatic quantum dynamics


Sebastian Mai (University of Vienna)

Trajectory surface hopping


Jeremy Richardson (ETH Zurich)

The mapping approach to surface hopping

Registration and Deadlines

The registration is now open. Please register here.

  • Please note that the number of participants is limited to 65 and places are given in the order of payment of the registration fee.
  • Registration will close once 65 participants are registered and have payed the registration fee.
  • The registration fee is EUR 205 for payments until January 7, 2026.
  • For payments after January 7, the registration fee amounts to EUR 240.
  • The registration is only final after payment of the registration fee – see here for details.
  • Participants can present their own work in a poster session or in short talks at a Minisymposium on Friday, February 27. Abstracts for posters and contributed short talks can be submitted in January (we will send an email about that in December). Please see here for more details.

Venue and Timetable 

The workshop takes place in the Kongresszentrum Bad Hofgastein, Tauernpl. 1, 5630 Bad Hofgastein, Austria.

On Monday, February 23, there will be an optional get-together in the evening.

The workshop officially starts on Tuesday, February 24, 2026 at 8:45 am and ends on Friday, February 27, 2026 after the Minisymposium at around noon.

From Tuesday to Thursday there will be sessions from 9:00–12:00 and 17:00–19:00, which consist of lectures given by the four invited speakers as well as a poster session and a conference dinner. On Friday (until around 12) there will be a Minisymposium with short talks of selected participants. 

Mission of the Workshop 

In this workshop series (previously also known as Mariapfarr Workshop) experts present special topics in Theoretical Chemistry, basics as well as new developments and advanced techniques. The target group of the workshop are senior students, postdocs as well as all senior scientists who want to practice lifelong learning.

We want to offer in-depth lectures on the topics, the lecturers should not proceed on the assumption that the participants are familiar with the topic. 3-4 lecturers at most are invited to make the necessary time for the lectures available to them.