Researchers develop a recyclable catalyst that uses CO2 to produce benzimidazoles

Transforming emitted CO2 into valuable products has been proposed as a way of reducing the amount of this greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere—using it as a raw material could help both close the carbon cycle and reduce the consumption of petrochemicals. Dr. Kyriakos C. Stylianou of EPFL and NCCR MARVEL and EPFL's Professor Paul Dyson have developed a recyclable catalyst that can be used to produce valuable products. The research has been published in Angewandte Chemie.

Photodoping Triggers Purely Structural Phase Transition in a Perovskite

MARVEL researchers were part of a group that used ultrafast X-ray diffraction to show how photodoping triggers a purely structural phase transition in a perovskite. The research was published in Physical Review Letters.

EPFL's Science Fair "Scientastic" Draws 17'000 Visitors to Stands Including MARVEL's

Some 17'000 visitors took part in the fifth edition of EPFL’s science fair Scientastic on 10 and 11 November.  The theme of the fair was “digitalization at your fingertips” and presenters, including NCCR MARVEL, tackled the question of how to make digitalization easy to understand through a series of demonstrations, displays, talks and workshops. This was the fifth edition of EPFL’s science fair – the next will be held in Sion (Valais) on 18–19 May 2019. Some pictures from the MARVEL stand are below: all photo credits to NCCR MARVEL.

Corminboeuf Awarded ERC Consolidator Grant for Work in Photoswitchable Catalysis

The European Research Council announced that 291 top scientists across Europe have been named as the recipients of its Consolidator Grant competition. MARVEL member Professor Clémence Corminboeuf is among them.  

Marzari, Spaldin, Yazyev Named in Global Highly Cited Researchers 2018 List

Annual list from Clarivate Analytics identifies researchers with multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year.

MARVEL Members Part of Team Awarded 14-Million Euro 2018 Synergy Grant

Gabriel Aeppli, professor at the Paul Scherrer Institute and a member of MARVEL's Scientific Advisory Board and Nicola Spaldin, professor at ETH Zurich and a MARVEL Group Leader, are part of a team that have been awarded a 2018 ERC Synergy Grant for their project "HERO" — Hidden, Entangling and Resonating Orders.   

Scientific Advisory Board Member Galli Wins Materials Theory Award

Professor Giulia Galli, a member of MARVEL Scientific Advisory Board, Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering at the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) and professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago and a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), was awarded the 2018 Materials Theory Award from the Materials Research Society. 

Artwork Honoring IMX's Women Faculty Now on Permanent Display

An installation sponsored by NCCR MARVEL and EPFL's Institute of Materials now inspires those passing through the entry hall of building MX on the EPFL campus.   

MARVEL Distinguished Lecture — Feliciano Giustino

The 17th NCCR MARVEL Distinguished Lecture will be given by Prof. Feliciano Giustino from the Department of Materials, University of Oxford, on "Electron-phonon physics from first principles".

MARVEL Junior Seminar — December 2018

Welcome to the 20th MARVEL Junior Seminar on Thursday December 6, 2018, 12:15 pm, EPFL, room ELA2. Patrick Gono (EPFL, CSEA) will give a presentation entitled "Free Energies from Density Functional Theory Calculations" and Quansheng Wu (EPFL, C3MP) will present "First-principle prediction of a Dirac semimetal and its topological phase transition". The seminar is chaired by Daiane Damasceno Borges.