University of Bordeaux, LAB & European ALMA Project Office, E SOE-mail:baudry@obs.u-bordeaux1.frThe Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an imaging radio telescope of upto 64 12-m antennas which can be moved to fixed stations across the Atacama plateau of northernChile to form antenna configurations extending from 150 m to a bout 15 km. Astronomical imageswill thus be made with moderate spatial resolution (around 1 arc second and above) or highresolution (0.1 arcsecond or better, down to 10 milliarcseconds). ALMA will provide the highestfidelity images over small and large fields of view by combinin g data from the main array of 12-mantennas with the ALMA Compact Array (ACA), a set of 4 12-m antennas and 12 7-m antennasdistributed over 50 m. The Atacama desert where the ALMA antennas will be deployed is at5000 m elevation. This site was selected because of its extreme dryness in order to lower theatmospheric phase noise and attenuation and, hence, to optimize the interferometric sensitivity inall of the 10 receiving bands spanning the range 30 GHz to 1 THz. We briefly comment on themajor ALMA science objectives, present some of the main elements of the telescope, outliningtechnical difficulties and innovations, and conclude with t he expected sensitivity and the probabledate for early science operation.2nd MCCT-SKADS Training School. Radio Astronomy: fundamentals and the new instrumentsAugust 26- September 4, 2008Siguenza, Spain