We still have a lot to discover about the ways in which elementary quarks and gluons work together to form the particles we observe, and that’s the focus of LIP’s Structure of Matter line of research. Our Partons and QCD group is currently involved in the COMPASS experiment, designed to study hadron structure, as well as in the preparation of the next steps in CERN’s fixed target experimental programme; LIP has the only Portuguese experimental team preparing to explore the frontier between nuclear and particle physics at the new FAIR facility at the GSI, where it is deeply involved in the HADES and R3B experiments.