Prizes and awards

  • Swiss Open Research Data prize acknowledges Nicola Marzari

    Nicola Marzari and his team at EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institut received a special acknowledgement from the jury of the National Prize for Open Research Data, awarded by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences on 6 December. The theme of the prize was “The re-use of research data”, for projects that either re-use data from other projects or make their own data available in such a way that other researchers can conduct further work with it.

  • Nicola Marzari among the most highly cited scientists in 2023

    Like every year, Clarivate has published its list of Highly Cited Researchers who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field of research. NCCR MARVEL Director Nicola Marzari, who leads the Laboratory for Materials Simulations (LMS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Laboratory of Theory and Simulation of Materials at EPFL, is featured in the list. 

  • Michele Simoncelli wins the SPS Award in Computational Physics

    The award recognizes the contributions “to a modern theory of thermal transport in solids” from his PhD research supervised by Nicola Marzari. 

  • Ana Akrap receives the Ludwig-Genzel-Prize 2023

    The University of Fribourg professor was awarded the prestigious recognition for her contributions to the physics of quantum materials obtained via infrared spectroscopy. 

  • William Curtin receives the Irwin Gold Medal

    Professor William Curtin, head of the Laboratory for Multiscale Mechanics Modeling (LAMMM) at EPFL's School of Engineering and a NCCR MARVEL project leader, has been awarded the Irwin Gold Medal by the 2023 International Congress on Fracture (ICF). The award recognizes his "pioneering contributions to multiscale mechanics modeling of materials".

  • Simoncelli wins 2022 EPFL Doctorate Award for thesis on theory of heat conduction in solids

    Michele Simoncelli, a former doctoral student at the Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) lab of Professor Nicola Marzari and NCCR MARVEL, has been awarded the EPFL Doctorate Award for his 2021 thesis “Thermal transport beyond Fourier, and beyond Boltzmann”.

  • Curtin receives the MMM Distinguished Career Achievement Award

    William Curtin, head of the Laboratory for Multiscale Mechanics Modeling (LAMMM) at EPFL's School of Engineering and project leader of NCCR MARVEL's Pillar 1, Design and Discovery of Novel Materials, has been selected as the 2022 recipient of the Multiscale Materials Modelling Distinguished Career Achievement Award by the MMM International Advisory Board.

  • Spaldin first woman to win Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics

    Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory at the Department of Materials Science at ETHZ and formerly project leader of NCCR MARVEL's Design & Discovery Project 5, is the first woman to have won the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. The recognition comes for her groundbreaking work on multiferroics, a new class of materials that could facilitate novel microelectronics applications such as the building of ultra-fast data repositories or supersensitive sensors.

  • MARVEL team wins inaugural PRACE HPC Excellence award for ground-breaking work on 2D materials

    The first ever PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) HPC Excellence Award has been awarded to a team led by Professor Nicola Marzari, head of Theory and Simulation of Materials at EPFL's School of Engineering and Materials Simulations at PSI, and director of NCCR MARVEL. The € 20,000 award is given to “an outstanding individual or team for ground-breaking research that leads to significant advances in any research field through the usage of high-performance computing”, and recognizes the team’s effort in the discovery and characterization of novel two-dimensional materials.

  • ETHZ's Spaldin wins 2022 EPS Europhysics Prize for outstanding achievement in condensed matter physics

    Professor Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory at the Department of Materials Science at ETHZ and formerly project leader of NCCR MARVEL's Design & Discovery Project 5, has won the EPS Europhysics Prize for her seminal contributions to the physics and applications of multiferroic and magnetoelectric materials. The prize was also awarded to Spaldin's colleagues Prof. Agnès Barthélémy and Dr. Manuel Bibes (CNRS/Thales laboratory of University Paris-Saclay) and Prof. Ramamoorthy Ramesh (UC Berkeley). The full press release from the European Physical Society is available here.

  • 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!

  • 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!