Poppelsdorf Campus will be a nexus for innovation, dialogue and inspiration during the upcoming event, whose slogan is “Marvin’s Second Birthday—Get Ready for Level Two.” The University IT HPC team, the HPC/A Lab and the TRA Modelling are looking forward to showing the community what a broad spectrum of research the Marvin supercomputer facilitates—and here’s where you come into the picture.
Science slam out, short presentations in— show what all Marvin can do
Instead of the science slam originally planned for this year, there will be a series of compact and focused presentations, reverting to the same format employed at Marvin’s first birthday event one year ago.
Whether you work in the natural sciences, medicine, life sciences, economics or humanities, if you have use Marvin for your research, we want to hear about it! You are thus requested to please submit a brief project summary by Thursday, February 26, 2026, and then give a project presentation before audience from a diverse range of fields on March 19, 2026.
Take advantage of this opportunity to
- gain visibility for your research;
- impressively showcase Marvin’s capability;
- get useful feedback from the judges panel; and
- potentially win extra support and computing power!
You can also submit posters to be shown at your presentation on the day of the event. Again, the idea is for you to show Marvin can take research ideas from the realm of the theoretical into the practical.
Keynote address by Dr. Georg Hager
Internationally renowned expert Dr. Georg Hager (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) will be giving the keynote speech on high-performance computing on the morning of the event, taking a look at the latest developments along with informed speculation on the future of HPC. The attending guests will be welcomed by Professor Maren Bennewitz, Vice Rector for Digitalization and Information Management, and will enjoy networking opportunities with other members of the HPC community over a piece of Marvin’s birthday cake. The project presentations will be held in the afternoon.
Workshops and hackathon on March 17 and 18
In the run-up to the community event on March 17 and 18, Dr. Georg Hager will be offering a workshop on “Elements of Performance Engineering” and holding a high-performance computing hackathon. These practical, hands-on sessions are designed to provide valuable know-how to University of Bonn researchers from all disciplines. The birthday event will thus be an ideal opportunity to promote your personal projects.
Marvin: computing power for cutting-edge research
The high-performance computer Marvin consists of some 300 computing nodes and is equipped with powerful NVIDIA GPUs and Intel CPUs. University IT is in charge of installation and operation, and Marvin is housed at the University of Bonn Institute for Numerical Simulation (INS). The HPC/A Lab is the primary go-to for research projects requiring HPC.
Many departments make intensive use of the available computing power. Researchers from all disciplines and students too can apply for access in order to take their projects to the next level.