Max Planck to set up two centres in South Korea

Postech and Max Planck scientists are already cooperating in both fields and will now intensify the exchange of know-how and staff, jointly training junior scientists in the two centres.

Partners from Australia, China and Japan are also represented in the Max Planck Centrefor Attosecond Science. The Max Planck Centre for Complex Phase Materials is headed by Liu Hao Tjeng from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, and Postech colleagues Jae-Hoon Park and Sang-Wook Cheong. The Centres focuses on the synthesis and investigation of new materials that exhibit phenomena caused by the quantum character of their constituent atoms.

The cooperation with South Korea was initiated by Peter Fulde, emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. He took on a Postech professorship in 2007 and became head of the Asia Pacific Centre for Theoretical Physics, which is located on the Postech campus.

Pohang is a major city on the east coast of South Korea. Pohang University of Science and Technology was founded in 1986, has around 3,000 students and is considered to be one of the top universities in the natural sciences in Asia.