Communication

MARVEL and EPFL's Science Outreach Department are pleased to announce equal opportunity initiatives targeting girls and boys. Two camps on materials and chemistry for children 11-13 years old supported by MARVEL will take place at EPFL in summer 2022. Registrations are opening on Monday and fill up quickly.

"A strong European Materials ecosystem drives the green and digital transition as well as a sustainable inclusive European society through a systemic collaboration of upstream  developers, downstream users and citizens and all stakeholders in between."

Materials Cloud, an Open Science Platform designed to enable the seamless sharing of resources in computational materials science, has reached the milestone 500 published record mark just four years after introduction.

The CarboQuant project, led by Professor Roman Fasel, head of the nanotech@surfaces lab at Empa and experimental group leader in NCCR MARVEL's  Design and Discovery Project 3, has received CHF15 million in funding  from the Werner Siemens Foundation. The grant, spread over ten years, will allow scientists to continue developing unique carbon materials that feature novel electronic and magnetic properties. The work may eventually lay the foundation for the development of quantum computers with novel architectures.  NCCR MARVEL members Pascal Ruffieux, Group Leader Carbon Nanomaterials, and Gabriela Borin Barin, research scientist in the nanotech@surfaces lab, are also involved in the project, which is coordinated by Oliver Gröning, Deputy Head of nanotech@surfaces Laboratory & Group Leader Functional Surfaces. The following is an article on the subject written by Empa's Rainer Klose.  

We are happy to announce that Virginie De Mestral (EPFL), Nataliya Paulish (EPFL) and Mie Engelbrecht Jensen (DTU) were granted INSPIRE Potentials – MARVEL Master's Fellowships after the October 2021 call. The three women will join MARVEL labs for a 6-month Master's research project — congratulations!

The Materials Genome Initiative was launched in 2011 to accelerate the discovery, design, development, and deployment of new materials by harnessing the power of data and computational tools in concert with experiment. The U.S. National Science and Technology Council has prepared the 2021 Materials Genome Initiative Strategic Plan, which updates and replaces the previous plan and reflects the significant advances that have been made over the past ten years. 

What an intense 8 months it has been for the #NCCRWomen! More than 100 researchers from all fields of science introduced who they are, what they do and why they do it.

The application portal for the 2022 edition of the E3 EPFL Excellence in Engineering summer internship program is now open. The program is organized by the School of Engineering of EPFL and offers an intensive research training opportunity to Bachelor and Master students from all around the world, with various scientific backgrounds.

A huge and frequently unaddressed problem in science and academia is that people feel that they are faced with the task of climbing a huge mountain, all by oneself. Mentors can be the sherpas who lend a helping hand and share some of the burden, so that one no longer feels quite so alone. Shobhana Narasimhan, Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India – and member of the SNSF's MARVEL Review Panel – shares her thoughts on the matter.

MARVEL supports the Coding club for girls, a project initiated by the EPFL Science Outreach Department (SPS) with the support of the Federal Office for Gender Equality. It offers free coding workshops for girls 11 to 16 years old organized in French, German and Italian throughout Switzerland.

Meet the #NCCRWomen and invite a researcher in your classroom to exchange with her about who she is, what she does and why she is doing it. Open to the teachers of the high school level.

The #NCCRWomen campaign shows how women in Swiss research are changing the world! Meet Giuliana Materzanini, Miriam Pougin, Emiliana Fabbri, Jigyasa Nigam and Chiara Ricca, all researchers of the NCCR MARVEL.