The World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC) is the major international organisation representing theoretical and computational chemists. The 2011 World Congress of WATOC, namely WATOC 2011, will be held at the Auditorio de Galicia and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Santiago in Santiago de Compostela, Spain from July 17-22, 2011. Held every 3 years, the WATOC World Congresses represent the major worldwide event that brings together an international network of theoretical and computational chemists. These Congresses are the main international conferences in the bourgeoning field of computational chemistry, and attract strong participation from government, industry and academia.
The World Congresses of WATOC have a history of widespread support across the globe – the number of participants attending this congress in the last edition reached a record number of 838 coming from around 40 countries. The venues of the past Congresses have been:

• 1987 Budapest (Hungary) (Inaugural Congress)
• 1990 Toronto (Canada)
• 1993 Toyohashi (Japan)
• 1996 Jerusalem (Israel)
• 1999 London (UK)
• 2002 Lugano (Switzerland)
• 2005 Cape Town (South Africa)
• 2008 Sydney (Australia)

The topics covered in WATOC 2011 will range from cutting-edge developments in the fundamentals of computational and theoretical chemistry, physics and material sciences to the application of the theoretical modelling to such diverse fields as biotechnology and drug and materials design, nanotechnology, condensed-matter physics, and chemical and materials engineering.
More specific themes include:

1. Methodological Advances: coupled cluster, DFT, TDDFT, DFTB, CPMD, CASSCF, MRCI, molecular dynamics, theoretical thermochemistry, relativistic effects, spectroscopy, photochemistry.
2. Structure and Chemical reactivity: conformational analysis, hydrogen bonding, weak interactions, reactions, tautomerism,  ion chemistry, organometallics, dynamics, homogeneous catalysis, clusters; solvation effects
3. Condensed phase and Molecular Materials: Nanoparticles, surfaces, materials, heterogeneous catalysis, polymers, condensed phase, electrochemistry.
4. Biochemistry and Biological chemistry: Enzyme catalysis, proteins/peptides, nucleotides, radicals in biology, mutagenesis, docking, drug design, bioinformatics.

The format of WATOC 2011 will include, as in the previous edition hold in Sydney,  plenary lectures, invited lectures, contributed lectures and poster presentations (a number of poster prizes will be awarded).