Communication

Registration to the science summer camps organized by the EPFL's Science Outreach Department in August are opening on 4 March and will fill up quickly. With the objective of promoting MARVEL-related fields, especially toward girls, and encouraging them to choose scientific and engineering careers, MARVEL is supporting the summer camp in chemistry for girls and boys 11-13 years old (5 to 9 August 2024) and the summer camp on materials science Matériaux super géniaux for girls 11-13 years old (12 to 16 August 2024). 

We are happy to announce that Serena Bragadini (UNIMORE, Italy), Valentina Sanella (Univ. Milano-Bicocca, Italy), Hela Mhiri (ENIT, Tunisia and ENSTA, Paris, France) and Jayashree Narayan (IISER Mohali, India) were granted INSPIRE Potentials – MARVEL Master's Fellowships after the October 2023 call. The four women are joining MARVEL labs for a 6-month Master's research project — congratulations!

Over 130 participants met in Grindelwald from 17 to 19 January to share new results and discuss plans for the final 2 years of the project. The creation of sustainable digital infrastructures for materials science, machine learning and large language models, new Swiss facilities and the exploration of quantum computing approaches were among the key topics of discussion.

The January 2024 issue of the journal dedicates the front page to the article "How to verify the precision of density-functional-theory implementations via reproducible and universal workflows", already published online in November 2023. The study is the most comprehensive verification effort so far on solid-state DFT codes, and involves 9 MARVEL researchers, including Giovanni Pizzi who is the corresponding author.

A collaboration between the COSMO Lab and BASF demonstrates how ML-driven materials modeling can be used to solve pressing technological challenges, designing catalysts that require much smaller quantities of rare elements, and gets a special mention in the company's annual press conference. 

MARVEL and EPFL's Science Outreach Department are pleased to announce equal opportunity initiatives targeting girls and boys. Registration for the science workshop Diamants, alu, caoutchouc, ils sont fous ces matériaux (girls 7-10 years old) are opening on 20 November 2023 and will fill up quickly. Registrations for the Coding club des filles in the French part of Switzerland are opening on 20 December 2023, with also propositions in the other cantons, in German and Italian with registrations all along the year. Those for the summer camps in chemistry and on materials science will open in March 2024.

Michael Herbst is a newly arrived tenure track professor with a joint affiliation between EPFL’s School of Engineering and School of Basic Sciences. He has joined MARVEL at the beginning of year 10, in May 2023, where he is a group leader in the Pillar 3, on Digital Infrastructure of Open Simulations and Data.  His desire is to bridge mathematics and materials science with numerical models. 

On the Ada Lovelace Day, which every year celebrates and raises awareness of the contributions of women to STEM fields, Nature asked six women in computer science and technology reflect on their experiences in the field. One of them is Shobhana Narasimhan, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, India and a member of the SNSF's MARVEL Review Panel. 

The junior members of the consortium gathered in Davos from 11 to 15 September, to present their work and discuss how to improve the interaction between  the research world and the industrial one.

We are happy to announce that Jente Clarysse (ETHZ), Anna Paulish (EPFL), Ayesha Ulde (IITM, India), Laura Mismetti (EPFL) and Aude Maier (EPFL) were granted INSPIRE Potentials – MARVEL Master's Fellowships after the April 2023 call. The five women are joining MARVEL labs for a 6-month Master's research project — congratulations!

A recently-appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor at EPFL, where she leads the Laboratory of Quantum Information and Computation, Zoë Holmes joined NCCR MARVEL in the spring of 2023 and now contributes to the Pillar on Quantum Simulations led by Giuseppe Carleo.

A  SNSF-funded study by MARVEL authors opens new doors for optimizing and comprehending the behavior of glassy thermal insulators