Collaboration with Canada
Agreement on Joint Max Planck UBC Centre for Quantum Materials
The Max Planck UBC Centre for Quantum Materials will be taking up its activities at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in 2011. As a starting point to launch this collaborative effort, the President of the Max Planck Society, Prof. Peter Gruss, and the President of the University of British Columbia, Prof. Stephen Toope, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Munich on October 4, 2010.
Scientists of the Max Planck Society and the University of British Columbia (UBC) have already been involved in collaborative activities for a number of years. The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart (Prof. Bernhard Keimer) and the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory (AMPEL) in Vancouver (Prof. George A. Sawatzky), in particular, were keen to intensify their joint research activities with the envisaged participation of further Max Planck Institutes and UBC institutions. The establishment of a Max Planck Centre provides the ideal platform for this venture.
The Max Planck Centre will focus on research in the field of Quantum Materials. Within this scope, physicists, chemists and material scientists will examine the quantum properties of complex materials in an interdisciplinary manner. Alongside a science programme, for which the foundation was laid during a joint workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in 2009, regular conferences are planned. Other key elements of the collaboration include the exchange of doctoral students as well as the creation of joint educational opportunities at UBC and the International Max Planck Research Schools.
The new Max Planck UBC Centre for Quantum Materials will be financed by the Max Planck Society and the Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF). On the part of UBC, funding will be largely provided from the private endowment of a new UBC Institute of Quantum Matter.
Prof. Bernhard Keimer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for State Solid Research, and Prof. George Sawatzky, Head of the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory at the University of British Columbia, will form the Centre's "leading team".
The Max Planck UBC Centre for Quantum Materials is the third Max Planck Centre to be established, alongside the CSIC-MPG Research Unit "Convivencia" in Madrid and the Indo Max Planck Centre for Computer Science in India.