  A quantum molecular model for fermions is investigated which works with
antisymmetrized many-body states composed of localized single-particle wave
packets. The application to the description of atomic nuclei and collisions
between them shows that the model is capable to address a rich variety of
observed phenomena. Among them are shell effects, cluster structure and
intrinsic deformation in ground states of nuclei as well as fusion, incomplete
fusion, dissipative binary collisions and multifragmentation in reactions
depending on impact parameter and beam energy. Thermodynamic properties studied
with long time simulations proof that the model obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics
and time averaging is equivalent to ensemble averaging. A first order
liquid-gas phase transition is observed at a boiling temperature of $T \approx
5 MeV$ for finite nuclei of mass $16...40$.
