A new approach to simulating warm and hot dense matter that combines density functional theory based calculations of the electronic structure to classical molecular dynamics simulations with pair interaction potentials is presented. The new method, which we call pseudoatom molecular dynamics (PAMD), can be applied to single or multi-component plasmas. It gives equation of state and selfdiffusion coefficients with an accuracy comparable to ab-initio simulations but is computationally much more efficient.PACS numbers: 51.20.+d, 51.30.+i, 52.25.Kn, 52.65.Yy The challenge of accurately modeling dense plasmas over a wide range of conditions represents an unsolved problem lying at the heart of many important phenomena such as inertial confinement fusion [1], exoplanets and white dwarfs [2,3]. The production of large scale and accurate tabulations of data such as equation of state and transport coefficients as a function of density and temperature is a formidable task, requiring a consistent quantum mechanical treatment of the many-electron problem together with a classical treatment of the nuclear motion. The atoms in the plasma may have bound states or be fully ionized, the electrons may be fully degenerate or approaching their classical limit. The nuclear fluid can range from weakly through to strongly coupled. A consistent, reliable and accurate treatment across all these physical regimes with an approach that remains computationally tractable remains as an open problem.Plasmas of interest are typically one to thousands of times solid density, and have temperatures from about 1eV (∼10kK) to thousands of eV. The difficulty of creating and controlling such plasmas in the laboratory explains the lack of experimental data to guide theoretical development, though ongoing campaigns at National Ignition Facility [4] and elsewhere (eg.[5]), and recent advances in X-ray scattering techniques [6] are beginning to shed light on this problem.From a simulations perspective, powerful and complex tools exist that can provide benchmark calculations. In the lower temperature regime (a few eV) one such tool is Kohn-Sham (KS) density functional theory molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) (eg. [7]). Electrons are treated quantum mechanically through KS-DFT and ions are propagated with classical MD. The simulations are very computationally expensive and this cost scales poorly with temperature, limiting the method to lower temperatures. In practice KS-DFT-MD also relies on a pseudopotential approximation, which reduces the computational overhead by limiting the number of actively modeled electrons, through an ad hoc modification of the electron- (r), n ext e (r) and n P A e (r), as described in the text. Also shown is the bound state (or ion) contribution (n ion e (r)) to n P A e (r) and the valence electron contribution n scr e (r). The double peak structure in n ion e (r) reflects the bound state shell structure in the aluminum ion, while the oscillations in the valence contribution n scr e (r) are the well known Friedel oscillations, whic...