The workshop covers several very active research topics in Dynamics from fundamental aspects to various applications (e.g. in biology, chemistry, weather prediction). We believe it will attract a good number of experts, in mathematics and in experimental sciences.

Dynamical Systems was born and developed as an interdisciplinary field, driven by requests from experimental sciences and aiming at providing a conceptual framework for explaining and predicting their observations. Indeed, some of its spectacular advances were prompted by such issues as the behavior of the solar system (homoclinic phenomena, non-integrability of the equations of motion), the Earth's atmosphere (convection, Lorenz strange attractors), or the evolution of ecological environments (Lotka-Volterra equations, invading species). The sciences of the environment are providing some new and very exciting new challenges, from the modelling of physical and biological systems, to the monitoring of global changes, just to mention a few. The meeting will bring together a good number of researchers, both young and experienced. It will include advanced courses and research lectures, covering a wide spectrum of subjects, and aimed at a broad audience of doctoral students and researchers interested in this field and its applications.

The goal of the workshop is to enhance an interdisciplinary approach to crucial environmental issues, where conceptual methods of Dynamics come together with practical applications. This is an area with huge potential for development across Europe and worldwide, and with obvious immediate applications. We have designed the workshop with the following priorities in mind:

• to promote and intensify contacts between mathematicians working in fundamental as well as in close contact with practical applications, on the one hand, and experts in experimental areas, on the other hand, thus helping to bridge "cultural" gaps between various branches of knowledge;
  
• to foster the scientific collaboration in the relevant areas across the borders of Europe (scientists of 7 European countries are involved) and with other regions in the world, by creating a privileged forum for interchange of experiences and development of cooperations;
  
• to attract talented students from across Europe to a very exciting research domain, by offering courses ranging from fundamental topics to numerical tools and to actual applications of Dynamics to concrete problems posed by the experimental sciences;
  
• to enhance the visibility of the research currently carried out in Portugal in the field of Dynamical Systems, at a
  stage where it is entering a whole new stage of development, and to bringing it together with themes of potential application.

We believe the Workshop will bring clear benefits from all these viewpoints, in particular, we expect to have significant impact on the interest for Mathematics and its applications in Portugal and in Europe in the near future.