Past events

On Thursday 23 April 2026, with the support of the NCCR MARVEL, EPFL will welcome for the seventh time the Ig Nobel Award Tour Show, with Marc Abrahams and the Ig Nobel Prize winners Mariska Kret, Marcin Zajenkowski, and Chris McManus. We will be talking about synchronization of hearts of new romantic partners, of narcissists being told they are intelligent, or of scrotal asymmetry in man and ancient sculpture. As usually, a great evening ahead! 

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 72nd MARVEL Junior Seminar: Zacharie Waysenson (Laboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne Université) and Maria Andolfatto (Laboratory for Materials Simulations, PSI) will present their research.

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 71st MARVEL Junior Seminar: Katja Sophia Moos (Center for Scientific Computing, Theory and Data, PSI) and Julia Gerecke (Laboratory of Quantum Information and Computation - QIC, EPFL) will present their research.

Join us to the cheer on Claire Paetsch, MARVEL PhD student in the group of Anirudh Raju Natarajan, selected to participate in the EPFL finals of "My Thesis in 180 Seconds," an international contest asking competitors to present their research, in plain language, to a non-specialist audience and a jury made up of researchers, journalists and business people in just three minutes.   

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 70th MARVEL Junior Seminar: Nataliya Paulish (Materials Software and Data Group, PSI) and Wei Bin How (Laboratory of Computational Science and Modelling - COSMO, EPFL) will present their research.

We would like to invite you to join us for the CECAM online celebration of the UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11. Gihan Kamel (SESAME facility, Jordan) and  Barbara Montanari (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK) will share with us their experiences and perspective on women’s access and participation in our domain. We are also looking forward to contributions and questions from the audience — boys and girls alike! 

In this THEOS-MARVEL seminar, Prof. Thomas Olsen (Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Denmark) will address "Magnetic excitations from first and second principles. Classical vs. Quantum mechanical approaches".

In this THEOS-MARVEL seminar, Prof. Marco Gibertini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) will address "Engineering emergent topological phases in van der Waals heterostructures".

The twelfth MARVEL Review and Retreat will take place on January 12-14, 2026. The event will gather all MARVEL members, group leaders as well as postdocs and students. This last Review and Retreat will focus on the scientific achievements and long-term structural efforts of MARVEL.

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 69th MARVEL Junior Seminar: Julia Chmielewska (Advanced Materials Processing, Empa) and Changpeng Lin (Laboratory of Theory and Simulation of Materials - THEOS, EPFL) will present their research.

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 68th MARVEL Junior Seminar: Niklas Frederik Schmitz (Mathematics for materials modelling - MatMat, EPFL) and Valentina Sanella (Materials Theory, ETH) will present their research.

CECAM and MARVEL present a new event in our Mary Ann Mansigh Conversation series. In a discussion with SWI swissinfo.ch science and technology journalist Sara Ibrahim and director of the Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo at the National Research Council of Italy Roberto Natalini, we will explore how scientists can broaden the impact of their work by engaging with divers forms of science communication, from storytelling to comics. We will see also why clear communication is crucial for building trust between science and society.