News

  • Equal opportunity activities for young girls and boys in 2022

    MARVEL and EPFL's Science Outreach Department are pleased to announce equal opportunity initiatives targeting girls and boys. Two camps on materials and chemistry for children 11-13 years old supported by MARVEL will take place at EPFL in summer 2022. Registrations are opening on Monday and fill up quickly.

  • Advanced Materials 2030 Manifesto calls for collaboration, scaling use of advanced materials

    "A strong European Materials ecosystem drives the green and digital transition as well as a sustainable inclusive European society through a systemic collaboration of upstream  developers, downstream users and citizens and all stakeholders in between."

  • Materials Cloud repository hits milestone 500 published record mark

    Materials Cloud, an Open Science Platform designed to enable the seamless sharing of resources in computational materials science, has reached the milestone 500 published record mark just four years after introduction.

  • Empa partners win landmark research grant for carbon nanomaterials

    The CarboQuant project, led by Professor Roman Fasel, head of the nanotech@surfaces lab at Empa and experimental group leader in NCCR MARVEL's  Design and Discovery Project 3, has received CHF15 million in funding  from the Werner Siemens Foundation. The grant, spread over ten years, will allow scientists to continue developing unique carbon materials that feature novel electronic and magnetic properties. The work may eventually lay the foundation for the development of quantum computers with novel architectures.  NCCR MARVEL members Pascal Ruffieux, Group Leader Carbon Nanomaterials, and Gabriela Borin Barin, research scientist in the nanotech@surfaces lab, are also involved in the project, which is coordinated by Oliver Gröning, Deputy Head of nanotech@surfaces Laboratory & Group Leader Functional Surfaces. The following is an article on the subject written by Empa's Rainer Klose.  

  • IBM's RXN for Chemistry project team wins 2022 Sandmeyer award

    The 'RXN for Chemistry' project team from IBM Research Zurich has won the 2022 edition of the Sandmeyer award, which is presented annually to a team or an individual for outstanding work in the field of industrial or applied chemistry. Congratulations to the team!

  • Three new INSPIRE Potentials fellows will join MARVEL for their Master's research projects

    We are happy to announce that Virginie De Mestral (EPFL), Nataliya Paulish (EPFL) and Mie Engelbrecht Jensen (DTU) were granted INSPIRE Potentials – MARVEL Master's Fellowships after the October 2021 call. The three women will join MARVEL labs for a 6-month Master's research project — congratulations!

  • U.S. presents Materials Genome Initiative strategic plan

    The Materials Genome Initiative was launched in 2011 to accelerate the discovery, design, development, and deployment of new materials by harnessing the power of data and computational tools in concert with experiment. The U.S. National Science and Technology Council has prepared the 2021 Materials Genome Initiative Strategic Plan, which updates and replaces the previous plan and reflects the significant advances that have been made over the past ten years. 

  • #NCCRWomen — a look back at the campaign

    What an intense 8 months it has been for the #NCCRWomen! More than 100 researchers from all fields of science introduced who they are, what they do and why they do it.

  • Two young MARVEL scientists win EPFL research project prizes

    Congratulations to former MARVEL members Antimo Marrazzo and Pablo Piaggi on winning the Prof. René Wasserman and IBM Research awards for work on novel materials and entropy, respectively! 

  • Giulia Galli wins the 2022 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics

    Prof. Giulia Galli (University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory), chair of MARVEL's Scientific Advisory Board, has been awarded the Aneesur Rahman Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in computational physics research.

  • EPFL Excellence in Engineering summer internship program: applications open!

    The application portal for the 2022 edition of the E3 EPFL Excellence in Engineering summer internship program is now open. The program is organized by the School of Engineering of EPFL and offers an intensive research training opportunity to Bachelor and Master students from all around the world, with various scientific backgrounds.

  • Mentoring the marginalized: thoughts by Shobhana Narasimhan

    A huge and frequently unaddressed problem in science and academia is that people feel that they are faced with the task of climbing a huge mountain, all by oneself. Mentors can be the sherpas who lend a helping hand and share some of the burden, so that one no longer feels quite so alone. Shobhana Narasimhan, Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India – and member of the SNSF's MARVEL Review Panel – shares her thoughts on the matter.