Marouane Faaras Wins MPG Trainee Award

Having recently completed his apprenticeship at the MPIfG, Marouane Faaras has been awarded the Max Planck Society’s Trainee Award for outstanding professional and academic achievements and particular social engagement while training. A committee of trainers and employee representatives selects up to 20 people per year to receive the 750-euro award, which was first established in 2007. The head of the MPIfG’s IT group presented Faraas with the certificate signed by the president of the MPG. The selection committee commended Faaras on his excellent educational and professional achievements, attention to detail, and ability to learn quickly, not to mention his interesting backstory, which saw him originally apply for the apprenticeship from Marocco and acquire very good German language proficiency in only a short space of time. During his training, he worked independently on IT projects in system administration, network access control, and video conferencing systems, mentored another trainee and several interns, and wrote his final paper on multifactor authentication. He has been a junior system and network administrator at the Institute since completing his apprenticeship.