At the end of the first year of operation, the LHC will collide in 2010 for the first time lead ions at the TeV scale. Many of the long-debated characteristics of heavy ion colli-sions will become experimentally accessible in this first exploratory low luminosity run. In particular, early experimental results are expected on the topics of event multiplicity and multiplicity distributions, elliptic flow, and early measurements of the nuclear modi-fication factor. This CERN TH Institute aims at an in-depth discussion of the theoretical basis and phenomenological modeling of heavy ion collisions at the TeV-scale. It will be a forum for the discussion of novel and even unconventional ideas, with particular emphasis on those measurements, which will be feasible in the first year of heavy ion running.