  We review an approach where the energy functional of Density-Functional
Theory (DFT) can be determined without empiricism via a Quantum Monte Carlo
(QMC) procedure. The idea consists of a nested iterative loop where the
configurational space of the electrons in the QMC procedure is determined by a
trial oneparticle electron density; this allows then for the determination of a
first guess for the energy functional, which is then in turn used for a DFT
minimization process. This latter delivers a new electron density and the loop
is repeated iteratively until convergence is reached and thus the electronic
structure of the system determined. In essence, from the applied point of view,
such an approach is a compromise between the large computational cost but high
accuracy of QMC and the reasonable computational cost but lower accuracy of
DFT. The proposed approach goes beyond the standard Kohn-Sham method, which is
the standard in DFT, and requires neither orbitals nor the a priori
specification of the exchange and correlation functional. From the conceptual
point of view, the relevant aspect is that the 3N-dimensional wavefunction is
derived as a function(al) of the three-dimensional electron density, which is
the key principle of DFT.
