MARVEL Junior Retreats

The MARVEL junior retreat is to bring, once a year, 50 young researchers together, to get to know each other, and share their experiences in their challenging research field. It combines few visionary talks from guest scientists selected by the students, together with a substantial body of student presentations and discussions, as well as opportunities to discuss important career issues. The organizing committee consists of postdocs or PhD students, helped by the program manager. 

The first MARVEL junior retreat was organized from July 8 to 10, 2015 in Mannedorf near Zurich. A first occasion for about 50 PhD students and postdocs to share their experiences in their vast and highly challenging research field. 

The second MARVEL junior retreat took place from July 18 to 21, 2016 in Les Diablerets. In addition to the contributed talks and posters by the junior theoreticians, the program featured presentations on career advancement and scientific outreach by MARVEL group leaders and invited specialists.

The third MARVEL junior retreat took place from July 3 to 6, 2017 in Pura-Lugano. Changing the tradition from a conference-like setting to a more informal work-together environment, that edition proposed less talks and instead more working sessions/interactive/social time. Besides giving time for the existing collaborations to work on their projects, the idea was to create the opportunity to start new collaborations. 

The fourth MARVEL junior retreat took place from July 17 to 20, 2018 in Fieschertal. It was attended by 33 participants from the MARVEL community (15 postdocs, 13 PhD students and 5 INSPIRE Potentials Master’s students). The event, organized by 2 junior researchers, was planned in a workshop style including selected keynote speeches aimed at improving research skills and professional development, and presentations by the participants, carefully chosen to achieve a good balance of research groups, gender, as well as master
students, PhDs and postdocs. Other activities were organized in order to foster friendly relations between different groups in the community.

In 2019, instead of a junior retreat, a group of MARVEL PhD students organized a summer school entitled "Advanced Electronic Structure Methods in Condensed Matter Physics". The event was broadly open to participants outside MARVEL, which nevertheless fully promoted and supported the effort, providing significant sponsorship and covering the registration cost for MARVEL members, instead of organizing a competing event.

2023 came back with the usual MARVEL junior retreats. The fifth MARVEL junior retreat took place from 12 to 15 September 2023 in Davos. The retreat focused on building bridges: Not only between different research directions but also between industry and academia. 

The sixth MARVEL Junior Retreat gathered over 60 participants in St. Moritz from 10 to 13 September 2024. This year's theme was "entrepreneurship, technology transfer, intellectual property rights", and the goal was to help participants explore the opportunities for a career outside academia.