The nucleus is a unique laboratory to study the complex nature of the many-body dynamics. A real challenge at present is the understanding of nuclei very far from stability. The study of those nuclei, many of which can be reached in upcoming radioactive ion beam facilities, may require drastic changes in standard concepts in nuclear structure physics. The description of these nuclei will provide an additional test to our understanding of the nuclear shell model and the underlying nucleon-nucleon interaction. In this project we propose to explore the structure of atomic nuclei through a novel Monte Carlo configuration interaction approach in the continuum. This will be necessary to describe phenomena as disparate as, e.g., neutron-proton (np) pair correlations, nuclear halos, double beta decay, nuclear reactions and radioactive decays of superheavy nuclei. In addition, one may get a better understanding of the paths followed by the nucleosynthesis process towards the creation of heavy elements. It may also be useful in treating other many-body systems where configuration interaction approaches play important roles, including atomic and molecular physics, condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry. This project will be done in close collaboration with experimentalists from KTH and other groups. In particular, we will apply the model to study the structure and electromagnetic properties of Sn and Te isotopes around 100Sn.