The workshop will be devoted to a discussion of systems with multi-minima energy landscapes, such as glasses, crystalline solids, proteins, clusters, large molecules, and combinatorial optimization problems. Of particular interest is a characterization of the landscape geometry ('how does it look like'), of the system dynamics ('what happens in the landscape') and of the relation between the two. This is complemented with the presentation of simulation, optimization and exploration methods for multi-minima systems, and their applications, but any contribution in the area of energy landscapes is welcome, of course.

The workshop will allow lots of time for the crucial extensive and intensive but constructive quizzing of the speaker by the audience. This also allows the participants to exchange ideas in detail, and experience has shown that many collaborations have resulted from these meetings.

Regarding the specific topics, this workshop has always attempted to bring people from different communities together; thus every contribution is welcome that addresses issues in the field of complex energy landscapes - ranging from abstract models, questions of e.g. multistage (solid state) chemical syntheses, phase transitions in physics, chemistry or biology that proceed in finite time, residence times in metastable states and relaxation or aging phenomena on multi-minima energy landscapes, issues in optimal control, simulation of time evolution of complex systems, energy landscapes of microscopic vs. macroscopic systems, and global optimization problems, over algorithm development to system specific applications in e.g. molecules (clusters, proteins, etc.) or solids (crystals, glasses, spin glasses, ionic conductors, etc.).

We also want to point out that in the week before a closely related workshop on "Optimization of thermodynamic systems" by Karl Heinz Hoffmann and Peter Salamon (July 27th - July 31st 2020). We would like to welcome a number of the participants of the landscape workshop there as well (and conversely) to allow and support additional discussions and perhaps the development of research projects beyond the time available during the first week. Therefore, we recommend joining us for both weeks.