supported by the European Science Foundation NEWSLETTER

The SIMU programme aims at building cooperation across Europe in the field of computationl physics and chemistry of condensed matter, with particular emphasis on the development of novel computational techniques to perform multiscale molecular simulations. Preface Bridging the gap in time and spatial scales between what can be done computationally, and what is relevant in experiment or biology or even industry is the goal of SIMU. Coarse grain-ing in its various guises, from the study of complex fluids to density functional theory and beyond is the indispensable tool with which we hope to build our bridge, and is present in all of the contributions, to this, the second issue of the SIMU newsletter. It may then come as a surprise to many of us that a similar gap also occurs in experiment, in for example, protein design, where analogs to techniques in statistical mechanics, such as coarse graining and in particular Monte Carlo simulation abound. This theme is explored by Michael Deem in a review article on combinatorial chemistry. But we should return to the beginning, where the programme chairman outlines the activities for 2001. Henk Lekkerkerker then comments on the seminal work of Daan Frenkel, and the award of the Spinoza prize. This is followed by a feature interview with Michael Parrinello, where he tells us about Anesur Rahman, the gen-esis of CPMD, recent successes in response theory, and future projects. Simone Melchionna and Jean-Pierre Hansen in a beautiful review explain how classical density functional theory can be combined with Molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations, or with standard optimization techniques, like steepest descent, to simulate complex fluids involving widely different length and time scales. The reactivity of water, and the problems this poses to theories of solvation, and in particular deviations from continuum theories, is the subject of an article by Ruth Lynden Bell where she tells us of work on this in Belfast. The activities of the condensed matter theory group of Kurt Binder at Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz is the subject of section VI. The 2001 activities of SIMU are described in detail in section VII. Several external conferences, some of which will receive SIMU support are listed in section VIII. The newsletter is completed by section IX entitled " Did you see ? " which is a commented list of interesting/useful web-sites, books, programmes and articles (of this year), and is a collective effort of …