The dynamicsoftclusters interacting with intense laser fields as well as ion-cluster collisions are investigated on a common theo- retical framework, called non-adiabatic quantum molecular dynam- ics (NA-QMD) [1], [2]. The NA-QMD approach treats simultanously and self-consistently electronic transition, vibrational excita- tions as well as their coupling in atomic many-body systems by combining classical molecular dynamics with time-dependent densi- ty functional theory (DFT). For metallic clusters, it is shown that the laser-induced electronic excitation and atomic relax- ation (i.e. Coulomb explosion) are strongly coupled. The trans- ferred excitation energy depends sensitively on the laser pulse length, with a maximum at pulse lengths of a few hundred fs in nice agreement with recent experimental findings [3]. For ion- fullerene collisions it is shown that the transferred (electronic and vibrational) excitation energy depends dramatically on the ion mass and, somewhat surprisingly, is nearly independent on the impact velocity in a wide range v pprox 0.15 ots 1 a.u. for large ion-masses, in clear contrast to the macroscopic concept of ''stopping power'' in solids, used, so far, in order to estimate this quantity. The related, occuring reaction channels are dis- cussed, too (scattering, endohedral complex formation, evapora- tion and multifragmentation). The calculations explain consis- gently the puzzling fragmentation patterns observed in recent iorrelation experiments [4, 5, 6].