  Modern nuclear structure theory is rapidly evolving towards regions of exotic
short-lived nuclei far from stability, nuclear astrophysics applications, and
bridging the gap between low-energy QCD and the phenomenology of finite nuclei.
The principal objective is to build a consistent microscopic theoretical
framework that will provide a unified description of bulk properties, nuclear
excitations and reactions. Stringent constraints on the microscopic approach to
nuclear dynamics, effective nuclear interactions, and nuclear energy density
functionals, are obtained from studies of the structure and stability of exotic
nuclei with extreme isospin values, as well as extended asymmetric nucleonic
matter. Recent theoretical advances in the description of structure phenomena
in exotic nuclei far from stability are reviewed.
