Although low-mass metal-poor galaxies in the local universe have often been proposed as the "primordial building blocks" in the hierarchical scenario of structure formation, several lines of evidence suggest that this may not be true. These apparent contradictions can be better debated by bringing together astronomers from heterogeneous fields including stellar populations and population synthesis, stellar evolution and the end-products of star formation, the physics and dynamics of the interstellar medium, and chemical evolution.

Combining theory of metal-poor and primordial star formation with low- and high-redshift observations over a wide range of wavelengths from the X-ray to the radio will allow us to assess the viability of using local dwarf galaxies as high-redshift analogues.

We aim to foster an open exchange among different astronomical communities by placing in juxtaposition, for the first time, low-redshift observational astronomers and observational cosmologists, as well as observers and theoreticians.

SOC
Roger Chevalier (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA)
Eli Dwek (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA)
Andrea Ferrara (International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy)
Leslie Hunt (Co-Chair, INAF - Institute for Radioastronomy, Firenze, Italy)
Deidre Hunter (Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ, USA)
Yuri Izotov (Main Astronomical Observatory, Kiev, Ukraine)
Suzanne Madden (Co-Chair, Service d'Astrophysique, CEA/Saclay, France)
Andre Maeder (Observatoire de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland)
Francesca Matteucci (University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy)
Sandra Savaglio (Max-Planck-Institut, Garching b. Munchen, Germany)
Daniel Schaerer (Observatoire de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland)
Raffaella Schneider (INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Firenze, Italy)
Evan Skillman (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Eduardo Telles (National Observatory, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

LOC
( iaus255 [at] arcetri.inaf.it )
Roberto Baglioni (University of Firenze, Italy)
Viviana Casasola (INAF - Institute for Radioastronomy, Firenze, Italy)
Marco Grossi (INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Firenze, Italy)
Leslie Hunt (INAF - Institute for Radioastronomy, Firenze, Italy)
Emanuela Masini (Chair, INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Firenze, Italy)
Raffaella Schneider (INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Firenze, Italy)