The Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania has a long standing tradition in nuclear many-body physics together with several experts in particle physics and quantum field theory. It is one of the main INFN division (National Institute of Nuclear Physics ) having not only the unit at the University but also a national laboratory (INFN-LNS). Besides it has also two experimental groups working in the ALICE and CMS collaborations at CERN. This will favor a dialectic discussion on the open issues and suggestions for new observables. Therefore it offers the possibility to work in an intellectual environment quite rich and suitable for the subject proposed in the project. In particular the theoreticians directly involved in the project have expertise in both the field of transport approach to nuclear dynamics and quantum field theory applied to strong interactions. This is indeed a key point because the research program of our unit needs both branches of physics that usually have been separated. This allows a more powerful and comprehensive approach to the physics of the quark-gluon plasma.

The present and future students involved in the project and the young members of the group will benefit from working on a  hot and modern subject, especially in view of the forthcoming LHC experiments at CERN. For the students there will be the possibility to enter the field also by mean of an Erasmus program between the University of Catania and the Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt in the group of Prof. C. Greiner.

From a computational point of view, which is an important part of the unit research duty, the University is involved in the INFN-GRID project (a world sharing net for computing and storage resources) hence offering the strongest international computational support to the proposed project.