For many decades now, the technologies of communication and information processing have been based on ever-smaller devices built from conductors or doped semiconductors, in which electrons are moved around. However a new kind of technology is beginning to emerge, based instead on the dynamics of quantum spins, sometimes with no moving electrons at all. This use of spins offers several huge advantages over existing technologies - far less heat is generated, and more subtle operations can be carried out using spin than electronic charge. It also offers a much more direct use of quantum mechanics and the possibility of quantum devices based on spin.

Some of the ideas currently being explored include 'spintronics' devices based on the transport of spin (without necessarily moving charges at all), and the construction of elementary solid-state logic devices made from very small numbers of spins (at the molecular or even atomic scale). The quantum properties of such devices are important, and moreover their behaviour at these length scales is often very different from that in the bulk - one of the big surprises has been the possibilities opened up by new kinds of magnetic quantum materials at the nanoscopic scale.

The main themes of the meeting will include

1. Spin transport, and spin momentum transfer
2. New materials: Novel Oxides, Graphene, etc.
3. Quantum spin devices; qubits, etc.
4. The technological perspective