MARVEL summer school: the pleasure of learning new things

This year’s Summer Camp “Des atomes aux ordinateurs” organized by MARVEL in collaboration with the EPFL Education outreach department attracted 21 high school students — 10 women and 11 men — for a full week of lectures, exercises and lab visits built around the theme of scientific programming. With motivations ranging from a general desire to learn more about EPFL overall to a “passion for the chemical properties of different materials,” students came from French-, German- and, Italian-speaking Switzerland — as well as France, the U.S. and even Hong Kong — to deepen their knowledge of the programming language Python. 

Led by Michele Ceriotti, head of EPFL’s Laboratory of Computational Science and Modelling, and EPFL HPC Application experts Vincent Keller and Nicolas Richart, a team of volunteer post-docs and PhD students led the students through a basic introduction to Python to applied exercises in cellular automaton, molecular dynamics and machine learning. The week was enhanced by visits to the clusters of SCITAS— the home of high-performance computing at EPFL — Clémence Corminboeuf’s Laboratory of Computational Molecular Design, and theSwiss Plasma Center.

Student evaluations indicated that the week was a success: participants overwhelmingly agreed that they enjoyed attending the camp, that it motivated them to learn more about the topic and that they would recommend it to their friends.

What did the students have to say?

“I really liked the teachers. The courses were very interesting and I learned a lot of things. The other participants were great and there was an excellent atmosphere. We had a lot of fun, while working and learning new things.”

“What I enjoyed about this camp was that I had the freedom to move on at my own pace. I also really enjoyed that we were able to explore different parts of EPFL so that we weren't just sitting looking at the computer all day.”

“The people at the camp were really nice – the students as well as the teachers. It also really helps to see lecturers who are passionate about what they do.”

“The lessons were well paced and at a level of difficulty adapted to each student.”

“I would definitely recommend this camp to my friends and hope to be able to participate in others during the next holidays myself.”

The next camp will be held in July 2020. More information about all Summer Schools held at EPFL can be found here.