Two main plenary sessions will be organized: one following the Welcome and Opening Remarks and the other before the Conference Summary and closing of the conference. At each of these two sessions, 3 invited speakers will deliver 30- to 45-minutes special lectures on "hot" Monte Carlo topics.

In addition 24 program sessions will be organized around the three main categories of Monte Carlo calculations in Radiation Physics, Particle Transport Simulation and Applications:

• 8 sessions on electron-photon
• 8 sessions on neutron-gamma
• 8 sessions on hadronic

For each category, 2 sessions will be dedicated plenary sessions and the remaining 6 will be parallel sessions.

All program sessions will start with a 30- to 40-minutes invited lectures, that highlights and reviews major accomplishments, trends and technical challenges as well as prospective views on the utilisation of Monte Carlo methods and techniques in the fields and topics covered at that session. Additionally, and for the majority of the sessions, 20 minutes presentations of papers submitted will be performed. The total duration of the sessions will be of approximately 2 hours.

Poster sessions will also be organized.

In summary, we expect to establish a high-quality programme with the aim of making of "Monte Carlo 2000" a top-level scientific meeting, not only to experts and senior researchers but also for junior participants and students. On this respect, the organization of tutorials is envisaged.