Dear Colleagues,

We have the pleasure to announce the special session "Waves in Granular Matter" at the next International Congress on Ultrasonics (ICU 2009) which will take place at the University of Santiago de Chile, from January 11th to January 17th 2009.

The main goals of this special session are:

• To bring together people involved or interested in researches related to elastic behaviors, contact dynamics and wave phenomena in loaded or unconsolidated granular media.

• To share about the processes occurring from the contact scale to the scale of granular sample itself.

• To share interests and potential applications of waves as probes for granular processes (jamming transition, compaction, avalanche detection...) between communities of Acoustics, Mechanics, Physics, Geophysics...

We invite you to submit abstracts accordingly on the congress website: http://fisica.usach.cl/~icu2009/

Invited speakers:

• Chiara Daraio (California Institute of Technology)

• Christophe Coste (Matiere et Systemes Complexes, Paris 7)

Important dates are the following:

• Abstract Deadline - October 15th 2008,

• Notification of acceptance - October 31th 2008,

• Deadline for reduced congress fee - November 1st 2008,

• Deadline for hotel reservation - October 8th 2008,

• Electronic availability of program and book of abstracts - December 15th 2008,

• Submission of full papers - January 09th 2009.

Looking forward to meeting you in Chile,

Francisco Melo, Stephane Job and Vincent Tournat.