About

The NCCR MARVEL is a centre on Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials [1, 2, 3] created by the Swiss National Science Foundation in May 2014.

MARVEL targets the accelerated design and discovery of novel materials, via a materials’ informatics platform of database-driven high-throughput quantum simulations, powered by

  • advanced electronic-structure capabilities, for predictive accuracy
  • innovative sampling methods to explore configuration/composition space
  • application of big-data concepts to computational materials science

The search is focused on materials for energy harvesting, storage, and conversion, materials for information-and-communication technologies, and organic crystals/pharmaceuticals.

Codes, data and workflows of the project are disseminated through the Materials Cloud platform and the Quantum Mobile virtual machine, both powered by the materials' informatics framework AiiDA.

Group photo made at the 2017 Review and Retreat that gathers all the MARVEL members.

The members of NCCR MARVEL at the 2017 Review and Retreat

MARVEL is directed by Nicola Marzari and EPFL acts as the leading house, but the NCCR involves 25 principal investigators across 8 Swiss Institutions:

Like all National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs), the funding period covers up to 3 phases of 4 years each (12 years in total); for each of the first two phases (2014-2018 and 2018-2022) the Centre was funded with 18 MCHF from the SNSF, matched by funding from EPFL and the other institutions. For the third phase (2022-2026) the funding is 12.33 MCHF from SNSF, matched by funding from EPFL and the other institutions.

[1] Materials' revolution: Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials

[2] La révolution des matériaux: conception et découverte de nouveaux matériaux par la simulation

[3] Materialrevolution: Computerbasierte Entwicklung und Entdeckung neuer Materialien