News

Michele Ceriotti, MARVEL group leader and head of the laboratory for Computational Science and Modeling at EPFL, has been awarded the C10 Young Scientist Award for 2018 "for his work on the development of novel and original algorithms to extend the scope and accuracy of molecular dynamics simulations, and to rationalize and predict the structure-property relations in complex materials".

Andrea Cepellotti, former MARVEL PhD student in the group of Nicola Marzari, has been awarded the American Physical Society Nicholas Metropolis Award for his outstanding doctoral thesis work in computational physics.

Michele Parrinello, MARVEL group leader and professor of computational sciences at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, has been awarded the 2017 Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences. He is honored "for his groundbreaking developments of molecular dynamics simulation methodology and associated landmark studies of chemical, material, and biomolecular systems".

The EPFL Science Outreach Department has organised this summer two camps on materials science and chemistry with the support of the MARVEL.

In mid-August 2017, MARVEL members Marco Gibertini (EPFL) and Vladimir Rybkin (University of Zurich) were both awarded an Ambizione grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

MaX - Materials at the Exascale — European Centre of Excellence on materials research via HPC and HTC towards the exascale — will award the MAX PRIZE FOR FRONTIER HPC APPLICATIONS IN MATERIALS RESEARCH – 2017 to recognize frontier research, performed anywhere in the world, that is enabled by enabled by Quantum ESPRESSO, SIESTA, Fleur, Yambo, AiiDA, and/or contributes to their advancement.

The 49th edition of the TOP500 list of the 500 known most powerful commercially available computer systems was released on June 19, 2017. The new number 3 supercomputer, after two Chinese systems, is the upgraded Piz Daint supercomputer installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). It is also catching up the sixth position in the Green500 list ranking the top 500 supercomputers in the world by energy efficiency.

The aim of the tutorial held at EPFL, Lausanne, on 29-31 May 2017 was to introduce 37 young researchers and more experienced practitioners to high-throughput computing (HTC). The programme included hands-on tutorials based on the open-source high-throughput platform AiiDA, complemented by four invited keynote talks to overview the diverse application fields of HTC.

On 5 May 2017, Nicola Spaldin, MARVEL group leader and professor of Material Theory at ETH Zurich, has been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society for her outstanding contributions to science, in particular in the field of multiferroics.

MARVEL and EPFL Science outreach department announce a new edition of the science workshop Diamants, alu, caoutchouc, ils sont fous ces matériaux, an initiative of the equal opportunities actions targeted at young girls and taking place at EPFL.

Fifteen developers successfully contributed to improve the AiiDA informatics platform during one coding week taking place in the Swiss Alps in early December 2016. About half of the participants were core AiiDA developers, the other participants were programmers motivated to contribute to AiiDA.

Dr. Sandra Luber, MARVEL member in computational chemistry and materials science at the University of Zurich, has been granted the Clara Immerwahr Award 2017 for her outstanding research contributions to the field of catalysis.