CRIS (Catania Relativistic Ion Studies) is a new series of Topical Conferences to be held at regular intervals in Catania or in its environs. Aim of the CRIS Conferences is to gather active researchers from several countries to discuss specific hot topics in the field of heavy ion physics.The first CRIS Conference, CRIS ''96, has been devoted to “Critical Phenomena and Collective Observables”, a quite hot topic after the recent experimental evidences of a liquid-gas phase transition in finite nuclei found by the EOS and ALADiN Collaborations and the progress made in the understanding of the relevance of collective observables, like flow and balance energy for the study of the Nuclear Equation of State.

CRIS (Catania Relativistic Ion Studies) is a new series of Topical Conferences to be held at regular intervals in Catania or in its environs. Aim of the CRIS Conferences is to gather active researchers from several countries to discuss specific hot topics in the field of heavy ion physics.The first CRIS Conference, CRIS ''96, has been devoted to “Critical Phenomena and Collective Observables”, a quite hot topic after the recent experimental evidences of a liquid-gas phase transition in finite nuclei found by the EOS and ALADiN Collaborations and the progress made in the understanding of the relevance of collective observables, like flow and balance energy for the study of the Nuclear Equation of State.