Newsletter - January 21, 2019

“The Scientific Advisory Board continues to be highly impressed and inspired by the results obtained in MARVEL. (...) With the presence of a critical mass of world-leading researchers in the Centre, it is exceptionally well positioned to advance computational materials science and to discover technologically transformative materials.”

--Professor Giulia Galli of the University of Chicago, Chair of MARVEL’s Scientific Advisory Board.

Dear MARVEL'ers,

This is just some of the praise coming our way as the SNSF awards us full funding of 18 million Swiss francs for our second phase, running until April 2022. This new tranche will let us build on the work done in Phase 1, leveraging our great community to pursue six ambitious Design-and-Discovery projects, two Incubator projects and the structural efforts of our “Open Science” and “HPC and Future Architectures” platforms. In the newsletter below, you can read more about the SNSF’s evaluation, new funding for Materials Cloud, prizes awarded to MARVEL members and some of our excellent research. We wish you a great start to the new year and continued success in all your projects.

Top Story

SNSF awards NCCR MARVEL a second tranche of 18 Million CHF

The Swiss National Science Foundation has awarded MARVEL full funding of 18 million Swiss francs for its second phase, which will run until April 2022.

NCCR MARVEL PIs win swissuniversities grant to scale up computational open science platform Materials Cloud

A team of NCCR MARVEL PIs has won a swissuniversities P-5 grant to further develop the Materials Cloud web platform for Computational Open Science. The project will ultimately allow users to autonomously contribute hundreds of different data entries in the different sections without having to interact with one of the platform maintainers.

Nicola Marzari Receives IBM Faculty Award for Curated Datasets on Demand

Nicola Marzari, head of the Laboratory of theory and simulation of materials (THEOS) and director of the NCCR MARVEL has been granted an IBM Faculty Award—the first given to an EPFL professor—for the project “Curated Datasets on Demand”.

MARVEL Contributions Result in Two Editors' Suggestions in Physical Review Materials in November

Research from NCCR MARVEL scientists and colleagues resulted in not one but two Editors' Suggestions in Physical Review Materials in November.

Five MARVEL members to give invited talks at American Physical Society's annual meeting

Two MARVEL postdocs and three PIs will give invited talks at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, being held March 4- 8 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Five new INSPIRE Potentials fellows will join MARVEL for 6-month research projects

We are happy to announce that Tara Niamh Tosic (EPFL, Switzerland), Julieta Trapé (National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina), Sinjini Bhattacharjee (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India), Maria Syzgantseva (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia) and Chiara Devescovi (Sacred Heart Catholic University, Brescia, Italy) were granted INSPIRE Potentials – MARVEL Master's Fellowships after the October 2018 call. All five women will join MARVEL labs in the coming months -- congratulations!

MARVEL Mini-Series on DFT, wavefunction methods, machine learning and metals

Jan 24, 2019, 17:00 until Jan 30, 2019, 11:00, EPFL

On January 24, 25, 28 and 30, MARVEL is holding a mini-series of four seminars covering key topics ranging from machine learning to wavefunction methods, as well as advanced DFT and metals.

MARVEL Junior Seminar — December 2024

Dec 13, 2024, from 12:15 until 13:15, Coviz2 (MED 2 1124), EPFL + Zoom

The MARVEL Junior Seminars aim to intensify interactions between the MARVEL Junior scientists belonging to different research groups – this is held in hybrid mode, in order to maintain in-person contacts and allow off-campus attendees to follow the seminars remotely! We are pleased to propose the 63rd MARVEL Junior Seminar: Mauro Dossena (Integrated systems laboratory, ETHZ) and Stefan Riemelmoser (Chair of atomic scale simulation - CSEA, EPFL) will present their research.

MARVEL Review and Retreat January 2025

Jan 13, 2025, 17:00 until Jan 15, 2025, 14:00, Sunstar Hotel, Grindelwald

The eleventh MARVEL Review and Retreat will take place on January 13-15, 2025. The event will gather all MARVEL members, group leaders as well as postdocs and students. Presentations will show to all the community where the projects stand and what are the next steps.

MARVEL Distinguished Lecture — Alexandre Tkatchenko

Mar 06, 2025, from 16:00 until 17:15, Zoom + MED 2 1124 (EPFL)

The 39th NCCR MARVEL Distinguished Lecture will be given by Prof. Alexandre Tkatchenko, University of Luxembourg. He will be presenting a lecture entitled: "AI-Driven Fully Quantum Biomolecular Simulations".

Follow MARVEL
@nccr_marvel

Save the Date

Ig Nobel Award Tour Show 2019

Mar 25, 2019, from 18:00 until 20:00, EPFL, Forum Rolex

On Monday March 25, EPFL will welcome for the fourth time the Ig Nobel Award Tour Show, with Marc Abrahams and a line-up of Ig Nobel Prize winners, with the support of the NCCR MARVEL.