Mar 27 2019
The National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) MARVEL has received full funding of 18 million Swiss francs from the Swiss National Science Foundation for its second phase, which will continue until April 2022.
Image credit: EPFL
The highest possible funding level—over 11 million Swiss francs—was awarded to the National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics for its third and final phase, which will continue until the end of 2022.
National Centre of Competence in Research MARVEL
NCCR MARVEL focuses on the expedited design and discovery of innovative materials, through a materials’ informatics platform of high-throughput, database-driven quantum simulations.
MARVEL’s national networking, scientific excellence and performance, and structural achievements and cooperation have been praised by the SNSF Research Council in its report.
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.
Giulia Galli, Professor, University of Chicago
Galli is also the Chair of MARVEL’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Through this funding, MARVEL will be able to advance the work conducted in the first phase, uniting a team of exceptional computational scientists toward the objectives of materials discovery and design. In the second phase, MARVEL will exploit this community as well as the merging of simulations, experiments, and data to focus on six ambitious Design-and-Discovery projects, which are supplemented by a couple of Incubator projects and also the structural efforts of its “HPC and Future Architectures” and “Open Science” platforms.
The unique Design-and-Discovery projects deals with exceptional scientific issues that hold potential technological implications for the high-value, high-tech industrial background of Switzerland, or more largely in ICT, pharma, and energy. Initially, the second phase will concentrate on complex metal alloys, organic crystals, metal-organic frameworks, nanomaterials, topological materials, and correlated oxides supplemented by Incubator efforts on solid-state ionic.
National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics
NCCR Robotics is uniting leading scientists from all over the country with an aim to design human-oriented and innovative robotic technology to improve the quality of life.
For its third and final phase, NCCR Robotics got the maximum possible funding level. Both the phases will run until the end of 2022. This decision was taken after the NCCR Robotics review panel made an extraordinarily positive assessment of the achievements of Phase 2. The panel commended the scientific outcomes and also the structural activities and aspects associated with technology transfer, communication, and education.
“After the strong performance in the previous years, the NCCR has become even more visible internationally and is now a benchmark for robotics worldwide,” said the panel, chaired by Professor Katharina Fromm from the University of Fribourg. “The NCCR groups have undeniably earned ‘seats at the top table’ of the international robotics research community”.
During a competitive assessment of all National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs) that are currently entering their third phase, NCCR Robotics was positioned among the best-performing ones by the SNSF. These centers received 73% of their Phase 2 budget to conclude Phase 3, which in the case of NCCR Robotics relates to over 11 million Swiss francs, the maximum possible funding that can ever be achieved.
With the help of this funding, NCCR Robotics will be able to continue its research on educational, mobile, and wearable robots for an additional four years, consolidating the previous achievement and paving the way for new fields of studies.