This year's first scientific activity is scheduled to take place on 14-16 January, when the ICTP will host the "Ninth International Workshop on Computational Materials Science: Electronic Structure Theory and Simulations." The workshop will be devoted to recent advances in computational condensed matter physics, based on calculations of the electronic structure of polyatomic systems. The activity, which began in Oxford in the early 1980s, has since been held in Braunschweig, Germany, and Trieste. Co-sponsors include the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) in Trieste and the University of Trieste's Department of Theoretical Physics.